Scottish book of the week

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stane, Scots Edition Matthew Fitt Black & White Publishing, £7.99. This has been interesting because I have read the first three Harry Potter books and have watched every film, over and over again, and never get tired of watching them.

What is different about reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in Scots? The things that are different are the language and the way you think about the story. The storyline is also slightly different to the original JK Rowling version.

What was a challenge? The biggest challenge for me was reading it because there were confusing words like ‘auncient’, which is Scots for ancient and ‘tremmlin’, which means trembling.

However, my own knowledge of the story helped me to work out what some of the words mean. If I couldn’t then I said them out loud and this helped me realise what they meant.

I enjoyed the challenge of reading it in Scots, as it was different and I have studied the Scots language at school, but it was sometimes difficult to understand, although this got easier the more I read.

I would recommend it to other Harry Potter fans as it was good and quite funny in parts because of the use of Scots words and ‘Chaipters’ as ‘The Blethering Bunnet’ instead of ‘The Sorting Hat’ and ‘The Man wi Twa Faces’ for ‘The Man with Two Faces’ (Professor Quirrell and Voldemort). There are also some funny sentences, like “…the tottie auld mannie stumled and near fell doon”.

After reading this I would be happy to try reading more of Matthew Fitt’s books in Scots, which include Roald Dahl’s ‘The Eijits’ and David Walliams’ ‘Mr Minging and the Billionaire Bairn’. By Fergus Alexander, aged 11