The Magical Worlds of "Harry Potter": A Treasury of Myths, Legends and Fascinating Facts

by David Colbert

J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" books have entranced millions of people all over the world. Her hero Harry Potter and the magical world she created is so artful and complete that a reader is able to lose themselves in an alternative reality of hippogriffs, dementors and blast-ended skrewts. You may, however, be surprised to learn that many of the names and references in the novels have origins in classical mythology, history and literature. Rowling lays clever clues in the names of her characters from Draco Malfoy to Sirius Black and her playful references to history and mythology add colour and depth to the narratives, characters and creatures.Ever wondered why chocolate is a good cure for a Dementor attack? Or maybe why Voldemort puts the 'Dark Mark' on Death Eaters? An entertaining, and yet authoritative investigation of J. K. Rowling's work, "The Magical Worlds of Harry Potter" will fascinate any reader and only add to their appreciation and enjoyment of the world of Harry Potter.

• ISBN10: 1843173026
• ISBN13: 9781843173021
• Publish Date: 1 November 2007 (first published 1 November 2001)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 7 July 2009
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Michael O'Mara Books Ltd
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 320
• Language: English

Reviews

[Nessa Luna]

Read this review, and many more on my blog October Tune!

I really like non-fiction books about my favourite stories; like a Lexicon about Harry Potter, and the 3-Minute J.R.R. Tolkien biography that I read a couple of days ago. I don’t really remember how I found out about this book, but I bought it immediately because it interested me a lot.

This book answers a lot of questions that you might have asked yourself while reading Harry Potter.

Though personally I didn’t really feel like all the questions had been answered in my opinion, I liked it very much. All the questions were explained and ‘answered’ as good as they could, but I guess sometimes you just can’t give a good answer to a question. It might have also been that I read over the actual answer because there was just so much text and so much to learn, that I was eager to move on and read the next ‘chapter’.

This writer also refers a lot to other works, I have seen a lot of references to the Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis), the Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien) and His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman), but that’s probably because this author has written similar books on those three works (and I am very curious about his Tolkien book). I also liked reading how J.K. Rowling was inspired by mythology (Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Norse); for example, there is a goblin called Ragnok in Order of the Phoenix who was named after Ragnarok, the Norse apocalypse.

This book answers questions like: “Why is the number seven considered a magical number?”, “Who were the first British wizards?”, “Why would Sirius Black become a black dog?”, and all kinds of questions like that. This book was published long before the series was finished, and has been edited and republished a lot since. I read the complete version, the one that was published in 2007 after Deathly Hallows was published.

I did have the feeling a lot was missing though, the majority of the book only refered to the first five books (and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them, and Quidditch Through the Ages), but then I found out why. The questions about Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows were in a special section of the book, about forty pages before the book ends. There was a warning before it, in case someone hadn’t read the last two books in the series.

Though I like that warning, I did found it a bit of a shame that the last two books weren’t added to the rest of the book. That is also probably why some questions felt incomplete/unanswered.