Granger, Rowling, and Dumbledore: The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J. K. Rowling

"In Muggle fairy tales," J.K. Rowling writes in her foreword, "magic tends to lie at the root of the hero's or heroine's troubles--the wicked witch has poisoned the apple, or put the princess into a hundred year's sleep....

In The Tales of Beedle the Bard on the other hand, we meet heroes and heroines who can perform magic themselves, and yet find it just as hard to solve their problems as we do. Beedle's stories have helped generations of Wizarding parents to explain this painful fact of life to their young children: that magic causes as much trouble as it cures."

In her new post-Harry Potter publication, Rowling presents five tales purported to have been written by the fifteenth-century wizard folklorist, Beedle the Bard, as translated by the talented Hogwarts graduate, Hermione Granger. Granger's versions of these venerable stories, taken from the original runes, are graced by an extensive commentary from the late Hogwarts' Headmaster Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Order of Merlin.

And indeed, as Rowling promises, each tale features wizards, warlocks, and witches who share the same faults known to plague the Muggle world. In the first tale, "The Wizard and the Hopping Pot," for example, a kindly wizard devoted to helping the mortal sufferings of the nearby Muggle village dies and leaves his self-absorbed son only an old cauldron with one worn bed slipper inside, with a note expressing his hopes that his heir will never need use the contents of the pot. When the young wizard turns away the villagers pleading for magical intervention against sickness and want, he finds to his sorrow that the pot is then plagued with all the misfortunes and illnesses of the supplicants. Indeed, the pot sprouts one bare foot and hops after him noisily, groaning, wailing, and retching. As the bedeviled wizard is finally forced to quiet the pot's hopping with the worn slipper, he realizes that he can only gain peace and happiness by helping cure the ills of his neighbors, and in the future the repentant young wizard is careful to give magical aid to his fellow mortals whenever it is needed.

In my favorite story, "The Fountain of Fair Fortune," three young witches and a down-on-his-luck knight are the only supplicants allowed to cross the barricade and seek to climb the mountain to the Fountain, said to have the power to cure any ill and grant any desire. Asha suffers from an incurable malady; Altheda has lost her wand and her fortune to an evil sorceress; Amata mourns the loss of her only love, and Sir Luckless, the knight, is a total failure in all things. As they climb the magical hill, the four must rely on each other for salvation, and when at last they reach the Fountain, they learn that together they have what is needed to end their own misfortune and gain lifelong happiness.

The three witches and the knight set off down the hill together, arm in arm, and all four led long and happy lives, and none of them ever knew or suspected that the Fountain's waters carried no enchantment at all.

It is in Dumbledore's commentaries that we learn that the marriage of Amata and Sir Luckless in this story is the source of the Malfoy family's hatred of Muggles. Likewise, in the full version of "The Three Brothers" we learn the complete story of the origin of the Wand, the Stone, and the Cloak of Invisibility which play major roles in the seven Harry Potter novels.

For Potter fans, The Tales of Beedle the Bard, Standard Edition is a must-read, one which within its slim covers reveals much that went unexplained in the seven books.

All proceeds from the sales of this book will go to J. K. Rowling's chosen charity, The Children's High Level Group, which seeks to help orphaned and abandoned children in institutions throughout Europe.

Between Worlds: Stoneheart by Charlie Fletcher

The clocker hid his watch-eye behind the blue lens again. "Eye to watch for and a watch for an eye. My mark."

George cleared his throat. "Can you tell me what's happening to me?" he asked.

"General terms? Certainly. Have found an un-London."

"Un-London?"

"Place with spits, taints, etcetera. Unseen by inhabitants of your London. But your London only one London. One of many. And what you see as London? Merely another's un-London. More things in heaven and earth, Horatio. Yes, indeed. And more heavens and earths. More hells, too. Some slip. Some walk. Some fall. Between worlds, you see."

Punished unfairly for a classmate's misdeed, George steals away from his class' museum field trip, and outside the building vents his anger by slamming a small carved wall sculpture of a dragon, breaking the head off. Abruptly the teeming, benign London street scene turns malevolent.

Attacked by a gargoyle turned pterodactyl which dislodges itself from the roof and menaced by three stone lizards from a fresco, George is saved only by the inexplicable intervention of the Gunner, the strangely animated bronze statue of a World War I soldier, who describes himself as a "spit," the spit and image of humankind shaped and charged by his maker, the sculptor Jagger. True to his maker, Gunner is bound to war against the "taints," evil-hearted stone figures of animals, guardian dragons, a minotaur, and flights of gargoyles. George is also helped by an orphan runaway, Edie, who is cursed with the ability to "glint," to see all of the "Un-Londons" simultaneously. At first drawn to George simply because he has become able to see the epic struggle she has been forced to watch all her life, Edie quickly becomes his only human ally and friend.

But there are other allies, "spits" with knowledge, power, and some magic of their own--the Gunner, whose vintage weapons can temporarily atomize the "taints," "Dictionary," a benevolent statue of lexicographer Samuel Johnson, who decodes the twisted riddling answers of the Sphinx and sends George and Edie to locate the "Black Friar" who will guide them to the Stone Heart of London and freedom from the bonds of Un-London. With knowledge of the way to his own redemption and the key to amending his fate literally in his hands, George approaches the Stone as his last seconds tick away, but at the last moment he turns back to Edie and chooses to continue the struggle with her.

Charlie Fletcher's screenwriter's background shows up strongly in the fast-moving, cinematographic style of his writing, with surprise attacks, chase scenes, and phantasmal monsters around every corner, at the windows, in dark tunnels and alleys, and even under the gray, slimy waters of the Thames. Indeed, if the novel has a fault, it is the dominance of episode over plot movement, in which pursuit and battles go on and on for hundreds of pages with little advancement toward the exposition of a clear overarching theme behind it all.

But, oh, those characters and their dialogue--they are pitch perfect. This strange combination of video game quick cuts and Dickensian characters is riveting. In fact, the best parts of the novel are when Fletcher's inventive "spits" hold forth on their world--Clocker, Gunner, the Fusillier, Dictionary, and the Friar, each with his own distinctive voice, all so finely drawn that they step off the page of print as ably as they step off their plinths and into the mainstream of the book.

Many authors shape alternate worlds of fantasy and reality, but Fletcher shapes a multi-layered world, a setting like an archaeological dig, with layers of time and magical realism that shift and reset themselves from scene to scene. It's a daring and preposterous premise which Fletcher mostly carries off with aplomb.

As to his theme, however, Fletcher is less agile. In Stoneheart Trilogy, Book One, The: Stoneheart (The Stoneheart Trilogy) there is a loosely linked strand of conflict between good and evil, between the dutiful "spits" who must abide by their "makers" commands, and the soulless "taints" who mindlessly war against them, but for most of the book George's struggle is primarily to survive and return to his safe, boring existence in everyday London. But this novel is but the first of a trilogy; the second book, Stoneheart Trilogy, Book Two, The: Ironhand (The Stoneheart Trilogy) gives us a more mature George, one who has consciously chosen to play the hero's role in whatever Un-London he is forced to fight. There, perhaps, the nature of George's quest will become clear. St. George and the Dragon? Perhaps.