J. K. Rowling’s Quidditch Through the Ages is a wizarding sports history for 9 year olds, written completely straight as though the game were real.<\/p>\n
There is no story here and no plot to follow. This is a reference book, the sort of thing a Hogwarts pupil would take off a library shelf, and it behaves like one all the way through. Chapters, dates, footnotes, museum exhibits, a bit of dry academic sniping.<\/p>\n
That is exactly what makes it fun.<\/p>\n
It opens with the question of why wizards fly on brooms at all. Why not carpets, or barrels, or armchairs? The answer given is beautifully practical. A broom leaning in the corner needs no explaining if a neighbour walks in.<\/p>\n
Then come the early broom games, and this is where your reader will start reading bits out loud. There was a German game where players tried to burst a dragon bladder on a pole. There was an Irish one where you flew a goat’s gallbladder through burning barrels without catching fire yourself.<\/p>\n
And there was a Scottish game called Creaothceann, where a hundred boulders were dropped from the sky and players wore cauldrons on their heads to catch them. It was banned in 1762 and the book tells you why, with a verse of the poem written about it.<\/p>\n
One thing to flag. This book does not tidy up its own history. Creaothceann killed a great many people. The Golden Snidget, the little bird the Snitch was invented to replace, was hunted to near-extinction and often crushed by whoever caught it. Its own author is clearly on the birds’ side, and there is a wonderful eyewitness letter from a witch who charges onto the pitch to rescue one. But if your reader minds animals coming to harm, they will mind this.<\/p>\n
If your reader already knows the world, the pleasure is in the detail. Quidditch is traced from a diary kept by a witch who could only name one day of the week, through a cheerful letter to a Norwegian cousin, to a Daily Prophet report from 1883 about angry players hurling baskets at a Ministry official.<\/p>\n
It is a book to dip into rather than read straight through, which suits a certain kind of reader down to the ground. Short sections, facts you can repeat, nothing to lose your place in.<\/p>\n
If they like this one, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is in the library too. It is the companion volume, another Hogwarts textbook set out as a proper reference work, this time an A to Z of magical creatures, and this edition is scribbled all over by Harry and his friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
J. K. Rowling’s Quidditch Through the Ages is a wizarding sports history for 9 year olds, written completely straight as though the game were real. There is no story here and no plot to follow. This is a reference book, the sort of thing a Hogwarts pupil would take off a library shelf, and it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":10705,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":7390,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them","lr_seo_hook":"The full invented history of wizarding sport, told with a straight face."},"book_tag":[1047],"age_group":[24],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[405],"class_list":["post-8468","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-magic-books","age_group-books-for-9-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-j-k-rowling"],"yoast_title":"Quidditch Through the Ages by J.K. Rowling | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"The full invented history of wizarding sport, told with a straight face. For ages 9+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n