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Harry Potter's muggles' guide to magic: A guide to understanding the Harry Potter books
Harry Potter's muggles' guide to A guide to understanding the Harry Potter books.
Hardcover
Published January 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 21, 2025
Out of all the Harry Potter guidebooks I’ve read, this one was one of the worst. It couldn’t fully decide if it even wanted to be a guidebook. Sometimes it would dive into literary analysis, the author’s opinions on the series, and the author’s theories. It also had nonstop typos. I can forgive most typos in this book like the odd spacing and the occassional two periods instead of one, but the typos on the character’s names and unique Potter words were a bit over the top. Some of the mispellings include Lilly, Griffindor, Rubius, Parsemouths, and Wizardu. The biggest issue with this guidebook though is the amount of inaccurate information about the Harry Potter series. I tried to keep track of the errors in the first half of this book, so here’s a sampling of what I noticed:
-“Each book in the series tells of one year’s adventures at Hogwarts from the time he is a 1st year student until his graduation in his 7th year.”: I can forgive this one a little bit because this guidebook came out when only the first four Harry Potter books were released. However, Harry only finishes six years at Hogwarts.
-“Albert Dumbledore, the headmaster, and his best friend Nicholas Flamel are the only two alive who know how to make a sorcerer’s stone, but they choose not to…”: Albert is obviously the wrong name, but the bigger issue is that Flamel created a sorcerer’s stone. If he hadn’t, the whole first book wouldn’t have happened because there would’ve been no sorcerer’s stone for Voldemort to hunt down.
-“Hagrid appears on Harry’s birthday… She brings Harry a birthday present…”: Odd to misgender Hagrid in a guidebook where there’s multiple drawings of Hagrid as a masculine character, but ok.
-“Harry goes to his first flying lesson… He has his first encounter with Draco Malfoy.”: Before the flying lesson, he had two encounters with Draco Malfoy (at Diagon Alley and on the Hogwarts Express).
-“Ron Weasley appears at # 4 Privet Drive, rescues Harry from the Dursley’s cellar, where he has been imprisoned…”: Harry was locked in Dudley’s second bedroom, not a cellar.
-“There he encounters Dracus Malfoy…”: I think Dracus is a combination of Draco and Lucius? But how do you even make that mistake…
-“Seamus Finnigan, Crabbe, Goyle, and Draco Malfoy continue to taunt Harry…”: Seamus was obviously never a part of Draco’s crew.
-“Professor Lupin uses a Boggart to teach the Patronus charm to Harry and the class.”: Lupin taught Harry the patronus charm in private lessons. The rest of the class didn’t learn the Patronus charm until fifth year when Harry taught them in D.A. meetings.
Obviously there are a lot more typos and inaccurate facts that I’m not covering here, but the fact that there is an error on nearly every page of this eighty page book is shocking. I think if it had been edited better and if some Harry Potter fans had fact checked the information before publishing, this book could have been a decent guidebook. However, as it currently is, it’s a really weak guidebook that I can’t recommend.
-“Each book in the series tells of one year’s adventures at Hogwarts from the time he is a 1st year student until his graduation in his 7th year.”: I can forgive this one a little bit because this guidebook came out when only the first four Harry Potter books were released. However, Harry only finishes six years at Hogwarts.
-“Albert Dumbledore, the headmaster, and his best friend Nicholas Flamel are the only two alive who know how to make a sorcerer’s stone, but they choose not to…”: Albert is obviously the wrong name, but the bigger issue is that Flamel created a sorcerer’s stone. If he hadn’t, the whole first book wouldn’t have happened because there would’ve been no sorcerer’s stone for Voldemort to hunt down.
-“Hagrid appears on Harry’s birthday… She brings Harry a birthday present…”: Odd to misgender Hagrid in a guidebook where there’s multiple drawings of Hagrid as a masculine character, but ok.
-“Harry goes to his first flying lesson… He has his first encounter with Draco Malfoy.”: Before the flying lesson, he had two encounters with Draco Malfoy (at Diagon Alley and on the Hogwarts Express).
-“Ron Weasley appears at # 4 Privet Drive, rescues Harry from the Dursley’s cellar, where he has been imprisoned…”: Harry was locked in Dudley’s second bedroom, not a cellar.
-“There he encounters Dracus Malfoy…”: I think Dracus is a combination of Draco and Lucius? But how do you even make that mistake…
-“Seamus Finnigan, Crabbe, Goyle, and Draco Malfoy continue to taunt Harry…”: Seamus was obviously never a part of Draco’s crew.
-“Professor Lupin uses a Boggart to teach the Patronus charm to Harry and the class.”: Lupin taught Harry the patronus charm in private lessons. The rest of the class didn’t learn the Patronus charm until fifth year when Harry taught them in D.A. meetings.
Obviously there are a lot more typos and inaccurate facts that I’m not covering here, but the fact that there is an error on nearly every page of this eighty page book is shocking. I think if it had been edited better and if some Harry Potter fans had fact checked the information before publishing, this book could have been a decent guidebook. However, as it currently is, it’s a really weak guidebook that I can’t recommend.
November 19, 2018
DNF: I couldn't finish a book that had obvious spelling errors (mostly character's names), incorrect facts about the Harry Potter books (Hermione's name is NOT pronounced her-ME-own), and numerous printing errors (including printing notes about the Prisoner of Azkaban under the Chamber of Secrets). Not to mention, the book was meant as a companion piece to the series, so therefore it didn't actually have very much information (lots of comments like: Something important is revealed). Lastly, the book was printed before the 5th book was released, so it's missing very important information from the end of the series (not that it would have been mentioned anyway.
P.S. The book mentions numerous times that it is not affiliated with the books or movies. This seems a bit shady.
I made it to the "General Glossary" section at the end. Just a random collection of "definitions".
P.S. The book mentions numerous times that it is not affiliated with the books or movies. This seems a bit shady.
I made it to the "General Glossary" section at the end. Just a random collection of "definitions".
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June 2, 2020i want to read this book because i want to know if the book is like the move
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews