What do you think?
Rate this book
Hogwarts Library #2-3
The Hogwarts Classics Box Set
Two Wizarding classics no Harry Potter fan should be without, now presented in an elegant boxed set.
Inside the Hogwarts Classics boxed set, readers will find a pair of books treasured by students at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry: Quidditch Through the Ages, a comprehensive history of the game and its rules (just try to ignore the doodles of Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and other Hogwarts students who couldn't resist); and The Tales of Beedle the Bard, translated from the ancient runes by Hermione Granger, with an introduction, notes, and illustrations by J.K. Rowling and extensive commentary by Albus Dumbledore.
From every sale of Hogwarts Classics, Scholastic will donate a total of twenty percent of the suggested retail sales price of this boxed set to two charities selected by the author J.K. Rowling: Lumos, a charity founded by J.K. Rowling that works to end the institutionalization of children (wearelumos.org), and Comic Relief, a UK-based charity that strives to create a just world free from poverty (www.comicrelief.com).
Inside the Hogwarts Classics boxed set, readers will find a pair of books treasured by students at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry: Quidditch Through the Ages, a comprehensive history of the game and its rules (just try to ignore the doodles of Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and other Hogwarts students who couldn't resist); and The Tales of Beedle the Bard, translated from the ancient runes by Hermione Granger, with an introduction, notes, and illustrations by J.K. Rowling and extensive commentary by Albus Dumbledore.
From every sale of Hogwarts Classics, Scholastic will donate a total of twenty percent of the suggested retail sales price of this boxed set to two charities selected by the author J.K. Rowling: Lumos, a charity founded by J.K. Rowling that works to end the institutionalization of children (wearelumos.org), and Comic Relief, a UK-based charity that strives to create a just world free from poverty (www.comicrelief.com).
256 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2012
30 people are currently reading
2157 people want to read
About the author
J.K. Rowling
643 books233k followersSee also: Robert Galbraith
Although she writes under the pen name J.K. Rowling, pronounced like rolling, her name when her first Harry Potter book was published was simply Joanne Rowling. Anticipating that the target audience of young boys might not want to read a book written by a woman, her publishers demanded that she use two initials, rather than her full name. As she had no middle name, she chose K as the second initial of her pen name, from her paternal grandmother Kathleen Ada Bulgen Rowling. She calls herself Jo and has said, "No one ever called me 'Joanne' when I was young, unless they were angry." Following her marriage, she has sometimes used the name Joanne Murray when conducting personal business. During the Leveson Inquiry she gave evidence under the name of Joanne Kathleen Rowling. In a 2012 interview, Rowling noted that she no longer cared that people pronounced her name incorrectly.
Rowling was born to Peter James Rowling, a Rolls-Royce aircraft engineer, and Anne Rowling (née Volant), on 31 July 1965 in Yate, Gloucestershire, England, 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Bristol. Her mother Anne was half-French and half-Scottish. Her parents first met on a train departing from King's Cross Station bound for Arbroath in 1964. They married on 14 March 1965. Her mother's maternal grandfather, Dugald Campbell, was born in Lamlash on the Isle of Arran. Her mother's paternal grandfather, Louis Volant, was awarded the Croix de Guerre for exceptional bravery in defending the village of Courcelles-le-Comte during the First World War.
Rowling's sister Dianne was born at their home when Rowling was 23 months old. The family moved to the nearby village Winterbourne when Rowling was four. She attended St Michael's Primary School, a school founded by abolitionist William Wilberforce and education reformer Hannah More. Her headmaster at St Michael's, Alfred Dunn, has been suggested as the inspiration for the Harry Potter headmaster Albus Dumbledore.
As a child, Rowling often wrote fantasy stories, which she would usually then read to her sister. She recalls that: "I can still remember me telling her a story in which she fell down a rabbit hole and was fed strawberries by the rabbit family inside it. Certainly the first story I ever wrote down (when I was five or six) was about a rabbit called Rabbit. He got the measles and was visited by his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee." At the age of nine, Rowling moved to Church Cottage in the Gloucestershire village of Tutshill, close to Chepstow, Wales. When she was a young teenager, her great aunt, who Rowling said "taught classics and approved of a thirst for knowledge, even of a questionable kind," gave her a very old copy of Jessica Mitford's autobiography, Hons and Rebels. Mitford became Rowling's heroine, and Rowling subsequently read all of her books.
Rowling has said of her teenage years, in an interview with The New Yorker, "I wasn’t particularly happy. I think it’s a dreadful time of life." She had a difficult homelife; her mother was ill and she had a difficult relationship with her father (she is no longer on speaking terms with him). She attended secondary school at Wyedean School and College, where her mother had worked as a technician in the science department. Rowling said of her adolescence, "Hermione [a bookish, know-it-all Harry Potter character] is loosely based on me. She's a caricature of me when I was eleven, which I'm not particularly proud of." Steve Eddy, who taught Rowling English when she first arrived, remembers her as "not exceptional" but "one of a group of girls who were bright, and quite good at English." Sean Harris, her best friend in the Upper Sixth owned a turquoise Ford Anglia, which she says inspired the one in her books.
Although she writes under the pen name J.K. Rowling, pronounced like rolling, her name when her first Harry Potter book was published was simply Joanne Rowling. Anticipating that the target audience of young boys might not want to read a book written by a woman, her publishers demanded that she use two initials, rather than her full name. As she had no middle name, she chose K as the second initial of her pen name, from her paternal grandmother Kathleen Ada Bulgen Rowling. She calls herself Jo and has said, "No one ever called me 'Joanne' when I was young, unless they were angry." Following her marriage, she has sometimes used the name Joanne Murray when conducting personal business. During the Leveson Inquiry she gave evidence under the name of Joanne Kathleen Rowling. In a 2012 interview, Rowling noted that she no longer cared that people pronounced her name incorrectly.
Rowling was born to Peter James Rowling, a Rolls-Royce aircraft engineer, and Anne Rowling (née Volant), on 31 July 1965 in Yate, Gloucestershire, England, 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Bristol. Her mother Anne was half-French and half-Scottish. Her parents first met on a train departing from King's Cross Station bound for Arbroath in 1964. They married on 14 March 1965. Her mother's maternal grandfather, Dugald Campbell, was born in Lamlash on the Isle of Arran. Her mother's paternal grandfather, Louis Volant, was awarded the Croix de Guerre for exceptional bravery in defending the village of Courcelles-le-Comte during the First World War.
Rowling's sister Dianne was born at their home when Rowling was 23 months old. The family moved to the nearby village Winterbourne when Rowling was four. She attended St Michael's Primary School, a school founded by abolitionist William Wilberforce and education reformer Hannah More. Her headmaster at St Michael's, Alfred Dunn, has been suggested as the inspiration for the Harry Potter headmaster Albus Dumbledore.
As a child, Rowling often wrote fantasy stories, which she would usually then read to her sister. She recalls that: "I can still remember me telling her a story in which she fell down a rabbit hole and was fed strawberries by the rabbit family inside it. Certainly the first story I ever wrote down (when I was five or six) was about a rabbit called Rabbit. He got the measles and was visited by his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee." At the age of nine, Rowling moved to Church Cottage in the Gloucestershire village of Tutshill, close to Chepstow, Wales. When she was a young teenager, her great aunt, who Rowling said "taught classics and approved of a thirst for knowledge, even of a questionable kind," gave her a very old copy of Jessica Mitford's autobiography, Hons and Rebels. Mitford became Rowling's heroine, and Rowling subsequently read all of her books.
Rowling has said of her teenage years, in an interview with The New Yorker, "I wasn’t particularly happy. I think it’s a dreadful time of life." She had a difficult homelife; her mother was ill and she had a difficult relationship with her father (she is no longer on speaking terms with him). She attended secondary school at Wyedean School and College, where her mother had worked as a technician in the science department. Rowling said of her adolescence, "Hermione [a bookish, know-it-all Harry Potter character] is loosely based on me. She's a caricature of me when I was eleven, which I'm not particularly proud of." Steve Eddy, who taught Rowling English when she first arrived, remembers her as "not exceptional" but "one of a group of girls who were bright, and quite good at English." Sean Harris, her best friend in the Upper Sixth owned a turquoise Ford Anglia, which she says inspired the one in her books.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
January 31, 2024
Pottermore in general is such a brilliant creation, and I love the extra stories and information we've been able to accumulate from it.
January 26, 2022
I like it. They're a good addition to the rest of the series
September 19, 2018
Quidditch: Way better than I expected. Her imagination astounds me. It even made me laugh.
Go Ballycastle Bats! Or.. Go Holyhead Harpies!! Or... Go Fitchburg Finches!!!
I can’t decide. But not Sweetwater All-Stars. Because even though I live in Texas. I don’t like this state.
Beasts: So cute. The audiobook is narrated by the very sexy Eddie Redmayne. His accent is pleasant for this American to listen to, because Brits sometimes are hard for me to decipher. I just bought the Kindle in Motion version of this book, so I'll have to re-read it and review that edition:)
Go Ballycastle Bats! Or.. Go Holyhead Harpies!! Or... Go Fitchburg Finches!!!
I can’t decide. But not Sweetwater All-Stars. Because even though I live in Texas. I don’t like this state.
Beasts: So cute. The audiobook is narrated by the very sexy Eddie Redmayne. His accent is pleasant for this American to listen to, because Brits sometimes are hard for me to decipher. I just bought the Kindle in Motion version of this book, so I'll have to re-read it and review that edition:)
December 24, 2019
Cute! But not suuuper special. I liked Tales of Beedle the Bard more than Quidditch Through The Ages.
And who wrote this?? 🤷🏼♀️
And who wrote this?? 🤷🏼♀️
January 4, 2025
Este libro es como ese viejo álbum de fotos que cuenta la historia de algo más grande que tú, un legado que trasciende generaciones. Al adentrarme en la historia del Quidditch, no solo aprendí sobre el deporte favorito del mundo mágico, sino sobre la pasión y el amor que los magos tienen por su cultura.
Es un recordatorio de que, incluso en los aspectos más mundanos de la vida, como un deporte, hay historias que conectan a las personas, creando lazos que perduran en el tiempo.
¿Quién diría que un libro sobre Quidditch podría enseñarnos tanto sobre la perseverancia y la camaradería?
¿Recuerdas esas historias que te contaban de niño, esas que traían consigo un mensaje escondido? *Los cuentos de Beedle el Bardo* son precisamente eso: un regalo lleno de lecciones que trascienden generaciones.
Cada relato me transportó a mi infancia, donde la magia no solo existía, sino que se sentía tangible. Rowling crea pequeñas joyas literarias que nos invitan a reflexionar sobre la avaricia, la valentía y la bondad.
Este libro es un recordatorio de que incluso las historias más simples tienen el poder de transformar corazones. ¿Qué historia necesitas escuchar hoy para recordarte el poder de soñar?
Es un recordatorio de que, incluso en los aspectos más mundanos de la vida, como un deporte, hay historias que conectan a las personas, creando lazos que perduran en el tiempo.
¿Quién diría que un libro sobre Quidditch podría enseñarnos tanto sobre la perseverancia y la camaradería?
¿Recuerdas esas historias que te contaban de niño, esas que traían consigo un mensaje escondido? *Los cuentos de Beedle el Bardo* son precisamente eso: un regalo lleno de lecciones que trascienden generaciones.
Cada relato me transportó a mi infancia, donde la magia no solo existía, sino que se sentía tangible. Rowling crea pequeñas joyas literarias que nos invitan a reflexionar sobre la avaricia, la valentía y la bondad.
Este libro es un recordatorio de que incluso las historias más simples tienen el poder de transformar corazones. ¿Qué historia necesitas escuchar hoy para recordarte el poder de soñar?
November 7, 2017
This is a great little set if you are wanting to expand your knowledge of the Harry Potter universe. The set consists of two books Quidditch Through the Ages and The Tales of Beedle the Bard.
Quidditch Through the Ages informs you of the history of Quidditch, at the start of the book (which made it feel so much more magical) are reviews wrote by some characters that you might recognise such as a hilarious review from Gilderoy Lockhart. There is also an introduction by one of my and many others favourite characters Albus Dumbledore this is a wonderful (and quite humorous) addition to the book and really set off all them Harry Potter feels.
The Tales of Beedle the Bard consists of five diverse fairy tales each with their own magical characters and dilemmas. My favourite of these was The Fountain of Fair Fortune as it was very uplifting. However, these stories were slightly overshadowed (which is not a bad thing) by Albus Dumbledore's notes on each individual story which were funny and insightful, adding an extra depth to the stories.
Overall I loved this little set (which was bought for me as a gift almost a year ago) and I am glad I finally got round to reading them.
Quidditch Through the Ages informs you of the history of Quidditch, at the start of the book (which made it feel so much more magical) are reviews wrote by some characters that you might recognise such as a hilarious review from Gilderoy Lockhart. There is also an introduction by one of my and many others favourite characters Albus Dumbledore this is a wonderful (and quite humorous) addition to the book and really set off all them Harry Potter feels.
The Tales of Beedle the Bard consists of five diverse fairy tales each with their own magical characters and dilemmas. My favourite of these was The Fountain of Fair Fortune as it was very uplifting. However, these stories were slightly overshadowed (which is not a bad thing) by Albus Dumbledore's notes on each individual story which were funny and insightful, adding an extra depth to the stories.
Overall I loved this little set (which was bought for me as a gift almost a year ago) and I am glad I finally got round to reading them.
October 12, 2017
Hairy heart definitely my favourite in this series, people find it uncomfortable, tragic and darkness but looking at another side, the warlock did nothing wrong but happened just because he has never experienced what is love
January 9, 2020
It touched my heart and reminded me why I love the Harry Potter universe in the first place. Definitely an interesting and fun read.
I only wish "Quidditch Through the Ages" was lengthier; of course it's all a fabricated universe, but having it a little longer would have been cool.
I only wish "Quidditch Through the Ages" was lengthier; of course it's all a fabricated universe, but having it a little longer would have been cool.
September 9, 2017
Still patiently waiting for a book all about witch and wizard government throughout the world because I'm a nerd like that.
October 7, 2017
Simple books that are more informational than story. That said, who wouldn't want information about Harry Potter??
January 1, 2019
Loved it! Written and created with so much love and detail
September 15, 2021
This is the second time Im reading these and I still love them! I will never let go to the Harry Potter fantasy world.
February 3, 2022
Me gustó, pero no fue algo excelente o increíble. Es una adición para la saga, cuando ya leíste todo y te gustaría seguir conociendo sobre el mundo mágico.
April 14, 2022
Quidditch through the ages is a very informational book about the origin of quidditch and how it is popular in the wizarding world. It gives imformation from teams to how the snitch was made. This is really good book I recommend to any Harry potter fans.
The tales of beedle the bard is a book that holds tale from the wizarding world some I feel have some good morals and some are just for fun but they are really cute and entertaining.
The tales of beedle the bard is a book that holds tale from the wizarding world some I feel have some good morals and some are just for fun but they are really cute and entertaining.
July 9, 2022
For any Harry Potter fan these are great reads. It takes you back to the days of Hogwarts. Learning the sports and its history and the fairy tales they reach their kids are so fun to read.
January 7, 2023
Great imagination and I liked the logos drawn on the flags of the teams and the information about each team really creativity
October 7, 2023
I like The Tales of Beedle the Bard because he tell you tales of the magic world , but Quidditch just rules and the other regulations.
July 26, 2025
excellent companion books to go with the Harry Potter series.
February 6, 2017
These are some fun reads if you would like to further your knowledge of the Harry Potter realm. Filled with some interesting commentary from one of everyone's favorite characters as well as cool facts that you can bust out at your next Harry Potter movie night. I give them a four out of five stars.
October 22, 2016
I loved both books but prefer the one on Quidditch to the one on fairy tales. Quidditch Through the Ages gave more insight to the history of the wizarding world, whereas the Tales of Beedle the Bard had excellent footnotes, which were sometimes more interesting than the tales!
November 20, 2016
Love that the two books came in a box set with a gorgeous cover! Definitely preferred the Quidditch Throughout the Ages over The Tales of Beedle the Bard, even though they included the tale of the three brothers.
September 26, 2016
It is a great book to read
January 1, 2017
A fun way to end the year.
January 4, 2017
Hopefully now I can understand what's going on
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews