The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. RowlingChildren’s High Level Group, 2008

These short stories are wizarding-world fables, “translated from the ancient runes by Hermione Granger” (though sadly, without any kind of textual commentary in Hermione’s voice), with “commentary by Albus Dumbledore.” The commentary, with its amusing footnotes and asides, is the best part of the book, though the stories themselves aren’t bad either. I liked “The Wizard and the Hopping Pot,” but not as much as I liked the horribly saccharine excerpt from a bowdlerized version that appears in the “Dumbledore’s” commentary; similarly, the best part of “The Fountain of Fair Fortune” was the story in the commentary of a failed Christmas pantomime at Hogwarts.