Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone: Illustrated Edition (Harry Potter, 1)

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Those in industries such as tourism and merchandising happily go with the lucrative flow, but others have sometimes wondered what all the fuss is about. After all, Harry Potter was not the first book about a young wizard or life at a magical boarding school. For example, The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper (1973) features a boy who on his eleventh birthday discovers that he has magical powers, and as the last guardian of the Light must vanquish the terrifying evil of the Dark. In A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin (1968) a boy is sent to a wizard school where he meets an aristocratic rival. Eva Ibbotson’s The Secret of Platform 13 (1994) features a forgotten door at King’s Cross station which is the entrance to a magical kingdom, and a protagonist being raised in the normal world by a family that doesn’t treat him well. There are also The Worst Witch series by Jill Murphy (1974-2018), Diana Wynne Jones’s Chrestomanci chronicles (1977-2006), Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series (1983-2015) and Anthony Horowitz’s Groosham Grange (1988). And for those “few who read”, book stores mostly got for them comics and graphic novels, which most of them created early this century. When my oldest angel told me she wanted to start reading the Harry Potter books, I couldn’t have been happier. As I was collecting all seven volumes off the shelf to bring up to her room, I started feeling nostalgic for the whole Hogwarts gang, and I realized that I’d never done more than a perfunctory review of this first volume. I figured it was high time to rectify that oversight.

Taking arms against Harry Potter, at this moment, is to emulate Hamlet taking arms against a sea of troubles. By opposing the sea, you won't end it. The Harry Potter epiphenomenon will go on, doubtless for some time, as J. R. R. Tolkien did, and then wane. To the review... I liked the book. I have no idea why it has sold a gazzilion copies more than any other children's book or why so many adults are so taken with it. JKR writes solid enough prose, though her addiction to adverbs in dialogue tags irks me no end, he said testily. She writes a fun and inventive story, though the internal inconsistencies would have distressed me even as a child. Why do the finest wizards in the land leave a great treasure guarded only by a series of puzzles rather than actual defences? If in the final scenes the puzzle poem hadn't been left to give the solution to the potion test ... or the key hadn't been left in the same room as the door that wouldn't yield to magic ... would that not have been a better way to defend the treasure? Yes ... it was more fun this way, but ... dammit ... kids aren't stupid... Harry Potter, a story about a young wizard that didn't even know he was a wizard. Harry Potter, a 10 year-old boy, who turned 11, is living with his horrible, rude and awful "family", The Dursleys. Mrs. Dursley is known as Harry Potter's mother's sister. The problem is, they didn't like each other, nor blend in with each other. They were different. Her sister was a witch, while she was just a Muggle, a person who cannot seek the magic and find it, nothing and no one special because they aren't able to turn things into other things, aren't able to fly on a broom, cast a robe on fire, defeat a villain, confuse a troll, aren't able to do anything, really.

Harry Potter Deluxe Illustrated Slipcase Editions

Although she writes under the pen name J.K. Rowling, pronounced like rolling, her name when her first Harry Potter book was published was simply Joanne Rowling. Anticipating that the target audience of young boys might not want to read a book written by a woman, her publishers demanded that she use two initials, rather than her full name. As she had no middle name, she chose K as the second initial of her pen name, from her paternal grandmother Kathleen Ada Bulgen Rowling. She calls herself Jo and has said, "No one ever called me 'Joanne' when I was young, unless they were angry." Following her marriage, she has sometimes used the name Joanne Murray when conducting personal business. During the Leveson Inquiry she gave evidence under the name of Joanne Kathleen Rowling. In a 2012 interview, Rowling noted that she no longer cared that people pronounced her name incorrectly. There's a reason us, the Fans, feel that we're connected, no matter where we from, different culture, ethics, ages..we're all graduated from there.. Both of my kids were born after the whole Harry Potter series was released. They are now old enough to start appreciating the story so I thought it would be fun to read it out loud to them. While it did take us a while because, you know . . . life happens . . . we were able to find a few minutes every few nights or so to read a chapter or part of a chapter. It was really fun to see them getting into it.

More countries welcomed the Harry Potter phenomenon.. The English edition AND the local translated ones , both been sold everywhere worldwide. More English books and novels sold in Egypt too, along with the Arabic ones, publishing more books for new Egyptian authors and writers along with more of the famous ones, Alaa El Aswany's debut Novel 'Yaqubean's Building' making a very good selling numbers.. So, As more readers from this generation start to increase , Publishers and Book Stores start to promote for more books for those readers who are hungry for more.. I have been struggling with mental health illness for some time, and it would be wrong to try and continue when I can no longer give the fans and the series the full commitment and energy it deserves. What comforts me is the knowledge that Bloomsbury will continue working with and supporting other artists to make the remaining books both beautiful and inspiring for new generations of young readers.’

Hermione – Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

I think the reason I waited so long to read this series is because I just couldn't imagine myself enjoying reading about an eleven-year-old boy and his adventures at a school of wizardry. I thought it would be too juvenile for my taste. I was wrong, of course. Haha! You gotta love the Weasley twins! They might be side characters but they always manage to bring some humour into the book and they succeed to give that typical sibling and family vibe. =) When the book came out in 1998, I was not yet a bookworm so I brushed this aside. I read only those books that my brother told me to read. He was the bookworm but he would not be caught reading any book being pushed by media hype. However, when Warner Bros. released the film adaptation in 2001, my daughter was 6 years old and I thought that, since there was too much hype, the movie must be good and we would have a memorable time with our first ever father-daughter movie date. I was wrong. She not only got scared because of the darkness inside the movie house but she trembled with fear during the life-size human chess game, in that scene when Ron was sacrificed. We left the movie in that scene with my daughter crying and me cursing it: I will never read Harry Potter.

The ultimate model for Harry Potter is "Tom Brown's School Days" by Thomas Hughes, published in 1857. The book depicts the Rugby School presided over by the formidable Thomas Arnold, remembered now primarily as the father of Matthew Arnold, the Victorian critic-poet. But Hughes' book, still quite readable, was realism, not fantasy. Rowling has taken "Tom Brown's School Days" and re-seen it in the magical mirror of Tolkein. The resultant blend of a schoolboy ethos with a liberation from the constraints of reality-testing may read oddly to me, but is exactly what millions of children and their parents desire and welcome at this time. The writing of course is, like I said, easy to understand. There were no words that were confusing in any way or words that got me mixed up because of how similar they sounded, and there were no problems. I didn't know what was gonna happen next and I know books are always better than movies, but I will watch the films after or after finishing one book just to see the differences. I hear they are kind of the same, just that the book provides some more information and detail. Like always, it's no surprise. He's huge, introduced as a half-giant and half-human, known as Rubeus Hagrid. Hagrid is the one who tells Harry the truth, telling him he is a wizard, and a well-known one as well. He's got talent, and has some of the same abilities as his parents. One being a witch and the other being a wizard, Harry is known as a wizard as well. And as Hagrid tells him the truth, Harry does too. He doesn't know what he is talking about and doesn't know what is going on. He doesn't believe he is a wizard, and doesn't believe the reason for his parent's deaths. But of course, Hagrid decides to tell him the truth and tell him his parents did not die on a car crash, for that seemed impossible, but they were killed by Everyone-Knows-Who and is the reason for his scar.

Beauxbatons Carriage – Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Ron is honestly the cutest. I don't understand how anyone could be mean to him. He may be weak, but he has his own strengths. He's so adorable and small and I hated how Draco treated him. There were some times unnecessary and I hated Draco for it, but I'll probably end up loving Draco some time throughout the series and probably regret it because I know he's still gonna be really mean throughout the series. I'm sure. I haven't spoiled myself, so I have no idea how his or anyone else's life goes, but I do know that he changes in some way. Hermione is a small and cute nerd as well, but sometimes I hated how sassy she was and bossy. She hated losing points for her house and because she, Ron, and Harry were in the same house, they had to work together and find a way to become friends to find out other truths and earn points for Gryffindor. She took everything very serious and showed off at times because of her perfect test grades and assignments, but I was glad she was able to put up with Ron and Harry while they put up with her. And in summer 2002, after the Movie wild success, Nahdet Masr publishing house got the rights and published the Arabic edition.