Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, by Newt Scamander
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
WARNING, this rating is for the illustrated edition only!
I give the first edition 5 stars, so why does this edition only have 3 stars?
Honestly, I was a bit disappointed, mainly because this was such a missed opportunity!
We could have had an actual Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry book, a Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them manual, this book falls short on that.
Why?
Because of the illustrations.
Weather you like them or not is irrelevant, let's look at this from an objective stand point.
Have you ever read a science book? Of course you have, we all have, in school.
Now it's been a while for me, but one of the things I distinctly remember is that the anatomical aspects of people/animals/plants were all presented, schematically, in a certain way.
It was something to aid the student in memorizing the parts that would undoubtedly be present in the following test.
Have you read Harry Potter's first illustrated book?
Turn to page 146, this is what a magical creatures school book would look like.
This is what I expected of this book.
This was what I wanted.
I wanted to feel like I was one of the students, I wanted to memorize every nook and cranny of every single creature in this book.
The illustrations put a damper on that.
"It's fine - I thought - I'll just think of it as an art companion book!".
The thing is, whilst you're reading there will be these things in parenthesis like "the image bellow", or "to the left", which only reminds me that this was supposed to be a school book.
It makes me draw comparisons between Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone illustrated book and this one, it makes me think that no one informed the artist this was a school book, it makes me think that even though I don't mind the illustrations, they fall short when in comparison to Jim Kay's because his are like he devours the book, the actual story, and goes from there.
It makes me think that the editor should have warned the artist about this, that they should have guided her, that everyone involved in this project should have picked up a school book and see how we actually do things in the real world and apply it to the Wizarding World, much like J.K. Rowling did.
Finally, there's the annotations by Harry, Ron and Hermione, or the lack there of.
Why remove this?
It was one of my favorite parts from the original book, it gave us an insight on the characters, their relationship and it was just silly good fun!
It was, yet again, another thing that made it feel like a school book.
Ugh! I wanted this to be a 5 star book so much, I've never given anything Harry Potter related less than 4.5!
Oh well, here's to hoping they'll do another Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them book in the future, an illustrated school book with even more annotations than the first one, maybe some of them can be by the trio's children finding/being given the book (as a hand-me-down?) and poking fun at their parents annotations.
WARNING, this rating is for the illustrated edition only!
I give the first edition 5 stars, so why does this edition only have 3 stars?
Honestly, I was a bit disappointed, mainly because this was such a missed opportunity!
We could have had an actual Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry book, a Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them manual, this book falls short on that.
Why?
Because of the illustrations.
Weather you like them or not is irrelevant, let's look at this from an objective stand point.
Have you ever read a science book? Of course you have, we all have, in school.
Now it's been a while for me, but one of the things I distinctly remember is that the anatomical aspects of people/animals/plants were all presented, schematically, in a certain way.
It was something to aid the student in memorizing the parts that would undoubtedly be present in the following test.
Have you read Harry Potter's first illustrated book?
Turn to page 146, this is what a magical creatures school book would look like.
This is what I expected of this book.
This was what I wanted.
I wanted to feel like I was one of the students, I wanted to memorize every nook and cranny of every single creature in this book.
The illustrations put a damper on that.
"It's fine - I thought - I'll just think of it as an art companion book!".
The thing is, whilst you're reading there will be these things in parenthesis like "the image bellow", or "to the left", which only reminds me that this was supposed to be a school book.
It makes me draw comparisons between Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone illustrated book and this one, it makes me think that no one informed the artist this was a school book, it makes me think that even though I don't mind the illustrations, they fall short when in comparison to Jim Kay's because his are like he devours the book, the actual story, and goes from there.
It makes me think that the editor should have warned the artist about this, that they should have guided her, that everyone involved in this project should have picked up a school book and see how we actually do things in the real world and apply it to the Wizarding World, much like J.K. Rowling did.
Finally, there's the annotations by Harry, Ron and Hermione, or the lack there of.
Why remove this?
It was one of my favorite parts from the original book, it gave us an insight on the characters, their relationship and it was just silly good fun!
It was, yet again, another thing that made it feel like a school book.
Ugh! I wanted this to be a 5 star book so much, I've never given anything Harry Potter related less than 4.5!
Oh well, here's to hoping they'll do another Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them book in the future, an illustrated school book with even more annotations than the first one, maybe some of them can be by the trio's children finding/being given the book (as a hand-me-down?) and poking fun at their parents annotations.
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