[HPforGrownups] Hogwarts Textbooks

[John Walton]

No: HPFGUIDX 28426

linman6868 at aol.com wrote:

> 1. If you were writing a wizarding textbook, what would yours be called, and
> what would your pen name be?  (You can write several; heck, Lockhart did.)

How To Hex Friends And Petrify People, by Vilius Dastardo

> 2. Do you suppose the Hogwarts textbooks are like ours nowadays, with chapter
> units and comprehension questions, and an annotated teachers' edition?  Or
> are they different?

No! Yech. I rather think of them as proper academic type books, like
university students have. Very old fashioned, very Hogwarts. It's up to the
teachers to set the questions, etc. Bear in mind that the young witches and
wizards are writing pages of essays very early on in their school careers.
This may seem anathema to those unused to the UK system of essays (I'm
thinking US here, because when I was in 6th grade it was ALL multiple
guess...I mean multiple choice :D).

> 3. How do you think the choosing process works at Hogwarts?  Obviously,
> Lockhart was able to demand that his students buy all his books, but surely
> other professors, such as Snape and Sprout, would have to coordinate their
> choices?  Does Dumbledore have a say in it?

I'm not sure there's that much coordination needed simply because there
probably aren't that many books produced for the age levels concerned. Sure,
there are tons of books in the library, but consider that the wizarding
world goes back at least 2500 years (Ollivander's was established BCE), plus
the fact that most of the library books are "further reading".

> 4. Wizards seem to write their books based on field experience.  Are there
> fields in which one doesn't need experience to compile a textbook?

I would assume that the very basic beginners books don't need much
background as they don't go into much background themselves :)

Great summary, Lisa -- I certainly enjoyed it!

--John

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"To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure."
--Albus Dumbledore

John Walton -- john at walton.vu
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