Looking for a sample book essay in English on the popular title Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them? Here’s one that will give you an excellent example on how a well written book essay should look like.
If you have never heard of flobberworms, puffskeins, murtlaps, or kneazles, you probably have not read J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. On its face, it is a peculiar, petite dictionary of magical creatures with names reminiscent of a Roald Dahl novel, authored by the famed writer of the Harry Potter series and published by Bloomsbury in 2001. It’s noteworthy for donating 80% of its proceeds to the Comic Relief Fund, an organization based in the U.K. which donates to thousands of charities around the world. It’s such a slim volume that is easy to dismiss it, at first glance, as a gimmicky marketing gewgaw intended to bring in revenue with little substance. Not so. Knowing the supposed origins of its history, linked closely to the wizarding world that a global readership has come to love, make it more than a curiosity.
During Harry Potter’s first year at Hogwarts, as detailed in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, the young orphaned wizard is sent a required list of supplies by his school. It includes the textbook Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander, first published in 1927 and apparently, at the time of Harry’s first year at school, in its 52nd edition. It includes a forward from Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, beloved and sage professor and Harry’s personal mentor. Throughout the volume, little sketches are included of the creatures, bizarre but cunning illustrations meant to represent each one. There are also doodles in the margins, supposedly inked in by Harry and his best friend Ron Weasley, during boring class periods. The book allows the reader to imagine themselves as a Hogwarts student, who is the genius of its publication.
J.K. Rowling’s wildly successful companion website Pottermore has enjoyed enormous success. It transforms you from a muggle into a wizard. The volume, supposedly kept in every good wizarding house throughout the English countryside, dispenses small tidbits of information that may not prove immediately useful – for example, I have left milk out many times without it being disturbed in the slightest by a knarl. That being said, I am perfectly at my liberty to imagine that if I do, I am taking my chances, as any good witch would know. In short, it does require a bit of dedication to the world that Rowling has created in order to find oneself troubled by the detailed descriptions of garden gnomes and dragons.
With the new movie of the same title delighting film critics everywhere (the New York Times Book Review called it “full of easygoing pleasures”), it might be easy to pass up reading an actual book for the cinema in all its technicolor glory. But, true devotees to Harry and his friends will no doubt find it satisfying to delve into the pages of the original volume and daydream about winged doxies and antipodean opaleyes. Do not lose your chance to read about all the mystery creatures that you might never meet in person.
References
- (2013, December 09). Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by J.K. Rowling – review. Retrieved December 07, 2016, from https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2013/dec/09/review-fantastic-beasts-j-k-rowling
- Cain, S. (2016, November 25). The screenplay of Fantastic Beasts is a rare miss for the wizarding world. Retrieved December 07, 2016, from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/25/jk-rowling-fantastic-beasts-screenplay
- Dragis, M. (2016, November 17). ‘Fantastic Beasts’ Unleashes J.K. Rowling’s Magic on Old New York. Retrieved December 7, 2016, from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/movies/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-review-eddie-redmayne-j-k-rowling.html?_r=0
- Gray, P. (2000, December 25). J.K. Rowling: The Magic of Harry Potter. Retrieved December 7, 2016, from http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2050580,00.html
- Harry Potter book profits to go to Comic Relief. (2009, July 16). Retrieved December 07, 2016, from https://www.comicrelief.com/news
- Singh, A. (2011, June 16). J.K. Rowling Launches Pottermore Website. Retrieved December 7, 2016, from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/harry-potter/8579560/JK-Rowling-launches-Pottermore-website.html
- The Hogwarts express. (2012, April 23). Retrieved December 07, 2016, from https://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2012/04/jk-rowling-and-pottermore
