The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling

"Wizards still have not found a way of reuniting body and soul once death has occurred. As the eminent Wizarding philosopher Bertrand de Pensees-Profondes writes in his celebrated work A Study into the Possibility of Reversing the Actual and Metaphysical Effects of Natural Death, with Particular Regard to the Reintegration of Essence and Matter: 'Give it up. It's never going to happen.'"

The Tales of Beedle the Bard is the quintessential enjoyable children's book. It's very different from J.K. Rowling's other books, which were firmly within the realm of Young Adult literature at least. The first and most noticeable difference with Beedle is the font size, which is this big, the better for little eyes to decipher I suppose. This font has the added bonus of turning Beedle into a chapterbook that (barely) exceeds 100 pages. All in all, it took me about an hour to read.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard was first introduced in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final book in Rowling's series. Hermione is gifted an original copy of the book from the estate of Albus Dumbledore after his death. In it, the story of "The Three Brothers" introduced Harry, Hermione and Ron to the Elder Wand, with which [SPOILER ALERT] Harry eventually kills Voldemort.

Like "The Three Brothers," all of the stories in Beedle are morally edifying, and teach the kind of lessons that young witches and wizards should take to heart. Thus, they don't resemble Muggle fairytales so much as Aesop's fables. In this edition, readers get the added bonus of Dumbledore's own footnotes following each story. The footnotes give additional information about wizarding lore, facts about the magical world and humorous asides.

It is this humor, this intentional naughtiness that you find in the very best children's books that I most enjoyed in Beedle. Like my other favorite children's book, J.M. Barrie's Peter and Wendy, Beedle was clearly written to be enjoyed by both the adult and child reader, for different reasons. Funny asides reveal themselves in the footnotes, and I can imagine that many of them would go right over a young child (or young wizard's!) head.

So there you have it. A short review for a short book. You can get this one at the bookstore for about ten dollars and if you are any kind of Harry Potter fan at all, I'd say buy it. All the proceeds go to a European children's charity, so you can pat yourself on the back for that too.

Peter and Wendy by J.M. Barrie

Peter Pan is interesting because there really is no definitive text for him: Author J.M. Barrie first conceived of him as a baby wandering around London's Kensington Gardens in the novel The Little White Bird, and then wrote a play about him in his more familiar form. The play went on for a long time, often with changes made to the plot from year to year--at one point, Peter had a goat, for instance--and then finally Barrie novelized Peter in Peter and Wendy.

I liked this book much more than I expected to. It's much more complex than the Disney version, which is sort of simplistic in its idealization of Peter. In the book, Peter is a much more complex and tragic figure--he's vain, self-centered, forgetful, violent, and foolish. And Tinker Bell is just a bitch. Peter and Wendy is full of allusions to sex--like the way that Peter fails to understand how "interested" Tinker Bell, Tiger Lily, and Wendy are in him--and death--like Hook's ticking crocodile, which is one of the best metaphors for death that exists in English literature. Peter and Wendy is great because it's dark, sarcastic, and ultimately heartbreaking. At the end, Peter agrees to come back in the spring every year for Wendy (to help with spring-cleaning), but he misses a year, and when he comes back the following year, he doesn't notice that he's missed one. This is a passage from that part:

"Who is Captain Hook?" he asked with interest when she spoke of the arch enemy.

"Don't you remember," she asked, amazed, "how you killed him and saved all our lives?"

"I forget them after I kill them" he replied carelessly.

When she expressed a doubtful hope that Tinker Bell would be glad to see her he said, "Who is Tinker Bell?"

"O Peter," she said, shocked; but even when she explained he could not remember.

"There are such a lot of them," he said. "I expect she is no more."

I expect he was right, for fairies don't live long, but they are so little that a short time seems a good while to them.

How fucking sad is that? After that, he misses whole decades before returning again for Wendy, and by then she has a child of her own. Peter is as forgetful as a child; that is his virtue and his shortcoming. I think perhaps too many children's books extol the virtues of the innocence of youth without any reservations. Peter and Wendy recognizes that growing up is both a tragedy and a triumph; that's what I think is so great about it.