Harry Potter

In celebration of Harry Potter's birthday (who happens to share a birthday with his creator, J.K. Rowling), this morning, millions of Harry Potter fans around the world woke up (or will soon wake up) to some very exciting news: the announcement of the worldwide release of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a very special book of five fairy tales written to supplement the Harry Potter series. In December 2007, Amazon was fortunate to come into possession of one of the original copies and it was our privilege to share images and reviews of this incredible artifact. Available in a standard edition and a collector's edition, which is exclusive to Amazon.com, these new editions of The Tales of Beedle the Bard will be available on December 4, 2008.

The Standard Edition features all five fairy tales from the original The Tales of Beedle the Bard, an introduction and illustrations by J.K. Rowling, and commentary on each of the tales by Professor Albus Dumbledore.

Housed in its own slipcase--made to resemble a wizarding textbook found in the Hogwarts library--the luxuriously packaged Collector's Edition includes metal corners, clasp, and skull; a reproduction of J.K. Rowling's handwritten introduction; commentary on each of the tales by Professor Albus Dumbledore; and 10 additional illustrations not found in the Standard Edition (or the original).

In a press release Rowling said: "There was understandable disappointment among Harry Potter fans when only one copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard was offered to the public last December.  I am therefore delighted to announce that, thanks to the generous support of Bloomsbury, Scholastic, and Amazon (who bought the handwritten copy at auction)--and with the blessing of the wonderful people who own the other six original books--The Tales of Beedle the Bard will now be widely available to all Harry Potter fans."

The Tales of Beedle the Bard is published by The Children's High Level Group (CHLG), registered charity number 1112575, a charity co-founded in 2005 by J.K. Rowling and Emma Nicholson MEP to make life better for vulnerable children. All net proceeds from the sale will be donated to The Children's Voice campaign.

--BTP

Earlier this morning our Harry Potter-loving colleague Jordan Thompson shared his enthusiasm for the just-released trailer for this November's film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Harry is barely there as this dark teaser flashes back to Dumbledore's first meeting with young future Dark Lord Tom Riddle. Fans are buzzing. Fun fact: in case you see an eerie resemblance, the actor playing young Tom Riddle is the nephew of Voldemort himself, Ralph Fiennes.

--BTP

Harry Potter fans, mark your calendars for September 23! That's when you can go back and celebrate where the magic started with the special 10th anniversary edition of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. This new edition will feature exclusive bonus material from J.K. Rowling as well as new cover art by Mary Grandpré. The new cover "depicts 11-year-old Harry looking into the Mirror of Erised, which Harry comes across in his first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and learns that the mirror shows you what you most desire."

And from Grandpré: "It's a real treat for me to get another chance to visually bring Harry back to his fans in not only a new scene, but in a new light. Going back to draw the first cover for the anniversary edition was an opportunity for me to show another side of Harry... a vulnerable side. Having come to know and love Harry the way we all have, after experiencing the whole series, I think we can appreciate him even more on an emotional level."

--BTP

Calling all Harry Potter fans!
Want to get your (gloved) hands on J.K. Rowling's The Tales of Beedle the Bard? Amazon.com wants to send you and a friend to London, England to spend a weekend with the rare and delightful book of fairy tales (security guards included, of course), handwritten and illustrated by J.K. Rowling herself. Open to muggles ages 13 and older in 24 countries, the Beedle the Bard Ballad Writing Contest challenges you to creatively answer one of the following three questions in 100 words or less:

• What songs do wizards use to celebrate birthdays?
• What sports do wizards play besides Quidditch?
• What have you learned from the Harry Potter series that you use in everyday life?

An Amazon.com committee will select 10 semi-finalist submissions (based on creativity and writing style) from each of two age categories: 13-17 and 18-and-over. Amazon.com customers will determine the two finalists and Grand Prize winner by voting for their favorites. But hurry--submissions will be accepted through 11:59 p.m. PDT April 22, 2008. 

If you haven’t already, take a look at The Tales of Beedle the Bard:

Harry Potter fans will be seeing double as word is out that the film version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final volume in J.K. Rowling's bestselling series, will be split into two pictures. Both movies will be filmed concurrently with Part 1 scheduled to be released in November 2010 and Part 2 arriving in theaters May 2011. David Yates is directing and Steve Kloves returns to write the screenplay.

--BTP

As you may have heard, J.K. Rowling has created a new book of fairy tales, but unlike her last book, which has reached print runs in the tens of millions, this one has a very limited edition: seven. Handwritten and illustrated by Rowling herself and bound in morocco leather, silver ornaments, and semi-precious stones, The Tales of Beedle the Bard is a collection of five wizarding fairy tales. (The tales played a crucial role in the plot of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows after Dumbledore left them to Hermione Granger, but only one of them, "The Tale of the Three Brothers," was included in the story.) Of the seven copies, Rowling gave six to "those most intimately involved" with the Potter books (names as yet unknown), and the last was auctioned off this morning at Sotheby's in London, with proceeds going to The Children's Voice, an organization cofounded by Rowling that campaigns for children's rights.

The book, which according to the AP was expected to sell for around $100,000, ended up selling for 1.95 million pounds (or, given the state of the U.S. dollar these days, $3.98 million). The buyer was unknown at the time of purchase, but later today was revealed to be ... Amazon.com. So needless to say, you can now read more about the book on our site, including some lovely photographs, a few of which I've added below. And there's an already-busy discussion board, where we (and our customers) are answering as many questions as we can about the book. --Tom

As we wait for their big one, Time.com keeps us busy with a flurry of year-end top 10s (50, to be exact), not all of which appear in the print edition of the magazine. If you sift through, you'll find four book-related lists. (And perhaps you'll also find some hints about their Person of the Year, as in their "Top 10 News Stories" of the year, "Goodbye, Harry Potter" ranks #4, one ahead of "Petraeus Under Fire". #1 is "Transition in Pakistan," so maybe we should be considering Pervez Musharraf for the top slot...) Time, like us but like few others, is sporting enough to rank their top 10s, which we applaud:

Fiction (which includes four of our overall top 7. Note that Time's books editor, Lev Grossman, did not include his twin brother's Soon I Will Be Invincible, which made our Debut Fiction Top 10):

1. The Brief Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (yes!)
2. Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
3. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalid Hosseini (we agree)
4. Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
5. Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
6. House of Meetings by Martin Amis
7. No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July
8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
9. Like You'd Understand, Anyway by Jim Shepard
10. The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver

Nonfiction:

1. The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
2. A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years by John Richardson
3. A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
4. Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA by Tim Weiner
5. The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross
6. Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
7. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
8. The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin
9. The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn Saks
10. Here If You Need Me by Kate Braestrup

Children's (no crossover with our kids' lists):

1. When Dinosaurs Came with Everything by Elise Broach and David Small
2. Today I Will Fly! by Mo Willems
3. Motherbridge of Love by Xinran and Josee Mass
4. Iggy Peck, Architect by Andrea Beaty and David Roberts
5. Great Joy by Kate DiCamillo and Bagram Ibatoulline
6. Diary of a Fly by Doreen Cronin and Harry Bliss
7. The Chicken Chasing Queen of Lamar County by Janice N. Harrington and Shelley Jackson
8. Smelly Bill by Daniel Postgate
9. City Lullaby by Marilyn Singer and Carll Cneut
10. Cherry and Olive by Benjamin Lacombe

Graphic Novels (light on the indie "art" comics this year, and heavy on web-only stories (#1 and #6)):

1. Achewood by Chris Onstad (a web comic)
2. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill
3. All Star Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
4. Marvel Zombies by Robert Zirkman, Arthur Suydam, and Sean Phillips
5. Jack of Fables, Vol. 1: The (Nearly) Great Escape by Bill WIllingham, Matthew Sturges, Tony Aikins, and Andrew Popoy
6. Erfworld by Rob Balder and Jamie Noguchi
7. The Principles of Uncertainty by Maira Kalman
8. Exit Wounds by Rutu Modan
9. Sentences: The Life of M.F. Grimm by Percy Carey and Ronald Wimberly
10. The Complete Peanuts, 1963-64, by Charles Schulz

Many more bests & tops to come this week, as I'll try to round up as many of the lists coming out as I can... --Tom

Of all these end of the year lists and honors, the big one remains Time magazine's pick of the Person (né Man) of the Year. Not quite as big as it was in the days of the monoculture (the end of which Time itself acknowledged in its pick of "You" as last year's winner, which was kind of like asking "Is God Dead?" about themselves), but it's still the reigning champion until the Wiki/YouTube swarm can somehow organize itself to anoint a successor. And at this time of year my good friend Josh and I, as a yearly highlight of our endless pop-culture palaver, make a game of predicting who (or what) Time will put between its red borders in the last issue of the year. We have a pretty good track record between us: in recent years, he's gotten You (well, he predicted YouTube--close enough) and Jeff