Review | Very Good Lives by J K Rowling.

Rating - 4.5/5

As with every other J K Rowling book since Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, I picked this one up on the day of publication and began to read it as soon as I got home from work. This isn't a novel, but a novelisation of a speech Rowling delivered to a graduating class, and the overall message is as inspiring and uplifting as you'd expect. 

You can really hear Rowling's eloquence, wit, and charming nature throughout the speech, and it had real structure and direction - definitely something I would have loved to have heard at my own graduation. The overall message enforces the need to be passionate, driven and imaginative to succeed, but also how to be gracious in times of defeat, and most importantly, how to pick yourself up from rock bottom.

As much as it is a fantastic graduation speech, it makes an excellent read, and because it is so short, it is easy to revisit in times where you may need a little bit of extra guidance and inspiration. I would really recommend this book, regardless of what stage in your life you are at, as I think that everybody could learn a valuable lesson from it.

Another thing I absolutely loved about this book, is the fantastic illustrations throughout. They really fit with the theme and style, and the colour scheme just pops off the page and drags you in. I just picked a couple of my favourites to share with you - to see the rest you'll have to buy your own copy!

As if all of that wasn't enough to make you want to go out and buy it, the book was also created to raise funds for charity:

As well as contributing toward university-wide financial aid at Harvard University, sales of Very Good Lives will benefit Lumos, a non-profit international children’s organization founded by J.K. Rowling, which works to end the institutionalization of children around the world.

J.K. Rowling said about the charity:

“Lumos is a spell I created in Harry Potter that brings light to a desperately dark and frightening place. At Lumos this is just what we do: we reveal the hidden children locked away behind closed doors in institutions and forgotten by the world, so that everyone first of all understands the problem and then works together to fix it. It is my dream that within our lifetime, the very idea of institutionalising children will seem to belong to a cruel fictional world.”

(from the Little Brown webpage)

Thanks for reading,

Tilly.

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