Fans Will Flip Over the Harry Potter Flip Book

I was unable to be in town for the grand unveiling of the seventh Harry Potter book at the bookstore where I've worked on and off for several years, so when I stopped by to say hi later that month, I wanted to get something Potterish. I settled on some blood pops - whose bumpy texture I found strange, and whose red coloring was much too runny for someone as messy as me - and, for something a little more permanent, a lovely little book entitled simply Harry Potter Flip Book. I presume by this that there only is one such flip book, though certainly any number of them could have been made, and certainly it would have made sense to make one for each movie. But this novelty, whose copyright reads 2007 though it depicts scenes from the film Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, appears to be one of a kind.

When I was a youngster, I was enthralled by flip books, and that's never really changed. I don't see them all that often; when I do, I can never resist the urge to thumb through them. I always used to try making flip books of my own a la Danny in Hot Fuzz - well, the subject was always a bit more benign than those, but it didn't really matter what action I was attempting, it always came off looking pathetic. My brother Nathan has managed a few decent ones; we seem to have several notepads with little doodles in the corner that spring to life if we leaf through quickly enough, though most of these are probably missing a few pages by now...

Of course, the Harry Potter flip book does not restrict itself to the corner of a page. Granted, it's a tiny book, smaller than the average pocket notepad but oriented horizontally. Still, it's large enough that those full-color pages make an impact. "Two spellbinding scenes from the Harry Potter movies spring to live in the palm of your hand!" promises a note printed on a scroll on the back cover. Does it fulfill that pledge?

Well, yes, as well as a book that is properly read in about 10 seconds can. Put your thumb on the front page and let the pages zoom past at whatever pace you're most comfortable with. You can get through the book in the blink of an eye or slow things down so much that you study each page at length. I recommend the middle ground, quickly enough that it actually looks animated, slowly enough that you can see what's happening.

If you start from the front, you'll get the thrilling moment when Harry flies over the lake with Buckbeak the hippogriff. Turn it upside down and start from the back, and it's the entertaining spectacle of Neville's Snape boggart taking on the wardrobe of his grandmother, then morphing into several other boggarts. Harry and Buckbeak are on the cover, and that is the scene that works the best; Snape being forced into Augusta's musty old dress, hat and muff looks great, but the second half seems rather nebulous, with only the giant spider clearly defined, and that's only really if you're taking it picture by picture - and if you do that, there are a couple of really creepy transitional Snape shots.

For four dollars, you get the pair of scenes, and it's a fun little book to have, especially if you are a big fan of Prisoner of Azkaban. Now if they'd just come out with a few more of them...