Missing Phrases and paragraph in audios books.

[Kiara Johnson]

Harry Potter and the Missing Passage.
No, it's not the latest adventure facing the nation's favourite schoolboy wizard, but a mystery surrounding some words that disappeared in a puff of smoke

It took a dyslexic fan of JK Rowling's hit series to realise that parts of the latest book, Order of the Phoenix, have been changed or left out of the BBC's "complete and unabridged" tapes.



Full News:

When Simone Nickerson, of Carbrooke, discovered audio books she was thrilled that she would be able to enjoy books.

By reading along with the tape she found she could read without difficulty and hoped she could one day share the stories with her son Luke, who has just had his first birthday.

"If I was just reading a book I'd lose understanding, my reading becomes quite broken. But having stories on tape, which I only discovered quite recently, has given me a new lease of life towards books," she said.

Mrs Nickerson enjoyed reading the first four Harry Potter books along with the tapes and said she was very pleased with Stephen Fry's reading, which matched the books perfectly.

And after waiting two months after the latest book was released so that she could buy the £65 tape set as well, the Harry Potter fan was bursting to find out what the young wizard did next.

But as she read through with the tape in the background Mrs Nickerson found three phrases had been changed, a sentence was missing and one whole paragraph on page 519 had been completely cut from the tape.

"If the tape is different from the book it throws me completely. When it first happened I didn't know if it was my reading or the tape and I had to get my husband to check," she said.

"I know they aren't huge differences but the tapes are a lot of money and they say they are complete and unabridged. I feel sorry for any children who have saved up and aren't getting exactly what they paid for.

"It would be nice if they could change the tapes to add those bits back in so they match the book."

A spokesman for the BBC said the tapes were changed at JK Rowling's request and still deserved the label "complete and unabridged".

"At the time of recording, Christopher Little, JK Rowling's agent, asked that the production company, HNP Ltd, incorporate some minor amendments to the text as requested by the author herself," she said.

"HNP was informed that, in time, these amendments would be incorporated into the books published by Bloomsbury. HNP Ltd has assured us that the audio version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is reproduced exactly as the author intended."

This was confirmed by Emma Schlesinger, speaking for Christopher Little. She described the omissions as "unsubstantial" and said: "The changes were made to later editions of the book. It is in fact quite usual in publishing a book of this size for minor changes to be made beyond the first edition, and should not detract at all from the reader's enjoyment."


So, as I see it, be happy if you have a first addition copy of the OFTP.  If you don't, you are missing some things.  Perhaps not important to the story line but special all the same in my eyes.

[Sabastian]

wow, no kidding good thing I got a first.  WEW!

[Fawkes]

 :)