Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Written by J. K. Rowling, this is the phenomenal first book in the fantasy series that turned a generation of TV kids onto reading. My family and I have been having a Harry Potter themed week, watching each of the films in the lead up to the final one, which we went and saw today. By about Wednesday, all the Harry Potter-ness began to get to me and I decided that once I had finished Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, I would reread the series from the very beginning. After all, they’re in my library and I’ll have to voice my opinions about them sooner or later. 

Having been brought up living with his unpleasant aunt and uncle after being orphaned by a terrible event, Harry Potter believes that he is just an ordinary boy. But his miserable world is turned right side up when he discovers that he is a wizard, and not just any wizard but “the Boy Who Lived.” Soon, Harry leaves the world of the ordinary behind him and becomes part of the magical world at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where he learns more about magic, casting spells, Quidditch, and truths about himself that his aunt and uncle have never wanted him to know. 

Praise for Harry Potter! This book inspired youngsters to switch off the TV and get lost in the worlds that books have to offer. Having read the books at the ripe age of ten, I find it really interesting to read them again at the age of 21 and still find them engaging and just genuinely terrific. Of course, the experience differs each time because when you’re reading this book for the first time as a youngling, everything is new and wondrous and it takes you longer to get through the book because you see anything over one hundred pages as a challenge. 

But then reading the book again as an adult and knowing what’s going to happen, not just in this book, but in the following ones as well, is just as fun because you can get it finished in a day and you spend the entire time exclaiming out loud “that’s right” and “oh my goodness, I’d forgotten that” as you notice little details you may have overlooked the first time. 

Written in the third person register, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is a really easy book to read because it sucks you in straight by introducing you to characters that you can relate to and then introducing you to the other characters that make up the fantasy side of the story. Each chapter is only about several pages long and unlike Dickens, Maguire, Tolkien, or Peake, Rowling has written the stories happenings very simply without a long lead up to any huge dramas or actions. Everything exciting that happens just happens, which is why these stories lend themselves to marvellous visual interpretation on screen. 

Filled with fantasy, action, drama, loveable characters, and remarkable ideas, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is a book that is in a league all its own. An amazing and timelessly classic read for both children and adults, it’s a really, really terrific book that I can always come back to and read again and again and again.