Back in 2008 The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J. K. Rowling was published.

Shortly after it was published in the US I went to Borders to pick up a copy. Yes, at that time we still had Borders 🙂

The cover of the book was very colorful and there were a lot of images from the stories.

The book contains five tales:

The Wizard and the Hopping Pot

The Fountain of Fair Fortune

The Warlock’s Hairy Heart

Babbitty Rabbitty and Her Cackling Stump

The Tale of the Three Brothers

There is also commentary by Albus Dumbledore which gives us further insight into the wizard world of J. K. Rowling.

Many of my readers will not have seen this edition. This is the UK edition of the book. Since I travel quite a bit I am able to pick up different editions of some of my favorite books. In this case, I was in Australia and picked this up at Borders in North Ryde, NSW.

You can see that the book cover is not so richly illustrated as the US edition. The same is true with the inside as well. In the US edition the illustrations are the same, but are usually larger than the ones in the UK edition.

It is interesting to see the different marketing strategy for the books. The UK edition looks like a well worn children’s classic that has been enjoyed through several generations, and the US edition looks like a freshly published book for the children of today. The scuffing on the UK edition is the way that it is printed.

For me, I prefer the UK edition. Which edition would you want to own?

Now to go see the Fantastic Beasts movie before it leaves the theaters.

Steven