Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

by J.K. Rowlin

Review by Micah Vander Beek

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is the first book in seven of the Harry Potter series written by J.K. Rowlin. The Harry Potter books are fantasy and fiction. The books are about a boy, named Harry, who is a wizard. The series is about Harry’s adventures during school in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Harry is a young boy whose parents were killed, then was taken in by his aunt and uncle. Harry grows up with Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and his cousin Dudley, the Dursleys. Harry is always mistreated, living a closet under the stairs, never getting birthday gifts, and being treated almost like a slave. But Harry was able to make weird things happen. At the age of 10, Harry found out he could talk to snakes and then somehow made glass disappear.

On Harry’s eleventh birthday Harry received a letter from a strange person. Uncle Vernon knew who this person was and refused to let Harry open it. The letters kept on coming and in a large amount. Harry eventually got ahold of a letter and it was from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The Dursley’s knew that Harry was a wizard all along and didn’t want him to be a “freak” like Petunia’s sister, Harry’s mom who was murdered by the most powerful dark wizard of all time, Voldemort. The Dursley’s did everything in their power to keep Harry from going to Hogwarts, but a very large wizard, named Hagrid, came and took Harry with him.

While Harry was buying all of his school supplies, Harry figures out that he is famous for stopping the dark wizard Voldemort. Voldemort had tried to kill Harry, but Harry somehow lived and Voldemort became very weak and disappeared.

The whole wizarding world was strange to Harry, but he loved it. He had trouble finding the proper train station, platform nine and three quarters, which can only be accessed by running through the barrier between platforms nine and ten. Wizards set up charms like this to keep muggles, people who are not magical, from discovering the wizarding world.

On the train to Hogwarts, Harry meets Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. They end up becoming Harry’s best friends. Harry also meets a rich spoiled boy, Draco Malfoy, who becomes Harry’s enemy.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione figure out that the school is protecting a very powerful magical object, the Sorcerer’s Stone, and someone is trying to steal it.

Who is trying steal the Sorcerer’s Stone? What do they want to do with it? Will they gain immortality? Will Voldemort return to power?

I thought this was a very good book. The mystery is very well created, and it was not the only focus of the book. Action was also mixed in at great times to help keep it interesting. The pace was good, it never went to slow that I got bored, and it didn’t go to fast either. The story brings a fiction idea and almost makes you believe this has really happened. It takes a story of wizards and puts it perfectly into Britain.

The explanations for why normal people don’t know about the wizards is so simple, charms that make people see old ruins instead of a castle, walls that appear solid but you can run right through them, and simple memory charms that make people forget what they just saw. They are so simple that you think it might actually be real.

Overall I think this is a really good book, it has really good pace and plausibility, the main characters never do anything out of character during the whole book. I do think this is the worst book of the whole Harry Potter series, but is still worth reading.