JK ROWLING'S NEW BOOK: Robert Dunbarreviews The Tales of Beedle the Bardby JK Rowling (Children's High Level Group/Bloomsbury, £6.99)
With worldwide sales of her seven Harry Potternovels now amounting to more than 400 million copies, only the most curmudgeonly muggles will begrudge JK Rowling her success or want to deny the positive effect she has had on children's reading habits. Equally, however, we are all entitled to our views on the literary merits of the books themselves and to speculate as to the direction her talents may take now that the boy wizard has cast his final spell.
That the latter has not quite happened yet is proved by the publication of The Tales of Beedle the Bard. This, we are told, is the complete version of the book mentioned in Rowling's 2007 title, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, as having had a significant role in the ultimate defeat of the dreaded Voldemort. A cynical response might see it as yet another marketing ploy, an act of opportunistic book-making, with an eye firmly on the need to provide a seasonal stocking filler.
Such cynicism must, however, be tempered by the fact that all proceeds from the sale of the book will go to the Children's High Level Group, CHLG, a charity co-founded by Rowling and dedicated to the welfare of institutionalised and marginalised children. It must also be said that the book is very attractively produced, complete with line drawings by Rowling herself. Its format and overall presentation really do make it, in John Newbery's celebrated phrase, "a little, pretty pocket-book''.
In terms of style, structure and idiom Beedle's five stories proceed along similar lines to those of universal fairy tale. There are recurring motifs and symbols and a range of stock characters and incidents. The good tend to be rewarded (eventually), the evil punished; kindness and generosity of spirit are endorsed; magic, though diverting, is no guarantee of ultimate happiness or success. Children of eight and upwards should enjoy these stories. It is, though, for the more adult reader that to each tale is appended a commentary, allegedly by none other than the great Dumbledore and written, in the main, in a mischievous style which mocks the verbiage of a certain kind of academic pretentiousness, bibliographical referencing included: there is a wonderful allusion at one point to the "eminent wizarding philosopher Bertrand de Pensées-Profondes". It is all very clever and all very entertaining.