A candidate for the worlds most boring bedtime story (The Tales of Beedle the Bard - J. K. Rowling)

Member Name: moo2moo

Product:	The Tales of Beedle the Bard - J. K. Rowling
Date:	12/10/09 (18 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Its short and its small

Disadvantages: Royalties from the sale of the book are donated to charity

For a bargaintastic 50p you can pick up a copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard from Sainsburys. As this carries an RRP of £6.99 its an ideal Christmas gift for any Harry Potter fan. Other mere mortals will be completely clueless as to why the heck they've been given something so bizarre and quite frankly even if you are a Harry Potter fan its very bizarre.

References to The Tales of Beedle the Bard appear throughout J.K. Rowlings Harry Potter stories, although only in passing. This book provides us with each tale in its very brief entirety with both a commentary by Professor Dumbledore (former headmaster of Hogwarts school for witches and wizards) and by J.K. Rowling herself.

Beedle the Bard is to the wizarding world what Hans Christian Anderson and the brothers Grimm are to us commonfolk (muggles). The book contains five short stories which are between five and ten pages long and aren't a bad read. The remainder of the book is devoted to explanations of the stories and their hidden meanings all of which drag the book out to 128 pages and boy does it feel drawn out. Tedious isn't normally a phrase I'd use in conjunction with J.K. Rowling but unfortunately this is. Had this been written by anyone else it would have been a complete flop, I doubt it would even have made it to publication. It really is that bad.

Having purchased it primarily for my children aged 6 and 9 the youngest enjoyed the fairy tales but found them too complicated and asked lots and lots of questions, the eldest pronounced it really boring and wandered off in search of Roald Dahl. Its definately more suited to the older reader.

The only saving grace of the whole book is its for charity, more specifically its for the Children's High Level Book Group of which J.K. Rowling is Co-Chair. All royalties from the sale of the book are donated to this charity which is pretty much the only reason I coud think of suggesting anyone else buy a copy.

Summary: Donate your 50p directly to charity and avoid this dire book