Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

J. K. Rowling's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a wizarding creature guide for 8 year olds, written as though it were a real Hogwarts textbook.

There's no plot. This is Newt Scamander's reference book, the one Hogwarts sets for Care of Magical Creatures, reprinted so that Muggles can finally get hold of a copy.

Newt introduces himself properly first. Born in 1897, mother an enthusiastic breeder of fancy Hippogriffs, two years at the Office for House-Elf Relocation that he calls tedious in the extreme, now retired in Dorset with his wife and three pet Kneazles named Hoppy, Milly and Mauler.

Dumbledore writes the foreword. He explains that the copy in your hands is a duplicate of Harry Potter's own, still carrying the notes his friends left in the margins, and he mentions in passing that the book has a Thief's Curse on it.

The introduction is the surprise. It's a long, straight-faced argument about which creatures count as a "beast" and which count as a "being", and it is very funny. In the fourteenth century the Wizards' Council ruled that anything walking on two legs was a being, so the goblins arrived with every two-legged creature they could round up. Trolls smashed the hall apart. Hags drifted about looking for children to eat. The Council Chief stood up to speak, slipped on a pile of Porlock dung and ran out of the room swearing.

Then comes the A to Z. Seventy-five creatures, each with a Ministry of Magic danger rating that runs from five Xs, meaning known wizard killer, down to a single X, which simply means boring.

Some are grim. The Acromantula is a talking spider with a fifteen-foot legspan that will eat anyone who comes near it. Some are gloriously silly. The Ashwinder hatches from a fire you forgot to put out, lives for exactly one hour, lays eggs that will set your house alight, then collapses into dust.

Reading it is nothing like reading a novel. Your reader dips in, finds something, reads the entry out to you whether you asked or not, then goes hunting for the next one. It's a book that ends up living by the bed for months.

One thing to think about first. The danger ratings mean a fair few entries describe creatures killing and eating people, all in the same calm textbook voice. For most children that flat delivery is exactly what makes it funny. If yours is a worrier, the Acromantula and the Manticore may not read as a joke.

It also assumes your reader knows Hogwarts. Without that, a good half of it lands on nothing.

If what appeals is a real book from an imaginary world, Quidditch Through the Ages plays the same trick on sport. Same footnotes, same solemn historians, plus an eleventh century Scottish game where the players strapped cauldrons to their heads before taking off.