Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone

A: Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone
B: Rowling, J.K.
C: Grandpre, Mary
D: Scholastic, 1998
E: Fantasy
F: 4-5
G: Let me just say, summarizing this book will not be easy, but here goes. This story starts with a normal family living a normal life. They do not, however, have normal relatives. Their relatives are magical and they do not associate with that crowd. Harry is their nephew and when his parents die, he must live with his aunt, uncle, and cousin. Strange things happen to Harry as he grows up, like weird dreams and objects doing strange things. When Harry Potter turns 11 he finds out his parents were wizards and that he is invited to go to school at Hogwarts to become one himself. He accepts and goes with Hagrid to a place called Diagon Alley to buy supplies for school. He also finds out that his parents left him a lot of money and that everyone in the wizarding world knows who he is. He travels to school and a train that leaves from a platform that doesn’t exists and meets several neat people, including his future best friends Ron and Hermione and his enemy Draco Malfoy. Once at Hogwarts, he had to be sorted into a house by a hat. It told him that he would make a great Slytherin but placed him in Gryffindor. Once in class, Harry’s worst teacher turns out to be Professor Snape. He also has many friends on the staff and does rather well in school. Harry also finds out he is good on a broom and made the Quidditch team as seeker. He is very good and is the envy of many because first year students are not allowed to be on the teams. At Halloween, a troll gets in to the school and Hermione tries to get it out, but Harry some how saves her and they get away. At Christmas Harry got an invisibility cloak, which is very hand later on. Harry also found a mirror in which he cold see what he wanted most, it turned out to be his parents staring back at him. Later in the school year, strange things start happening and Harry and his friends start to investigate. It all comes down to them going after the Sorcerer’s stone. They go through many trials and only Harry makes it to the end to find that the person who is trying to steal the stone is a professor, Quirrell. It turns out that Voldemort has infected him and is controlling him. Harry kept Quirrell from getting the stone and he saved the day. He will be returning to Hogwarts in the fall.
H: The first time I read this book was when I was in 8th grade. I did not want to read it and I “suffered through it,” and then I read it again and again. I guess I have read this book 5 or 6 times now, and it gets better every time. My most favorite art of this story, and it goes for all of the books, is the complex and overlapping emotion. To me, this book feels more like real life than anything I have ever read. You experience more than one emotion in real life, and you do in this book also. The most overwhelming section of the book for me was when Harry finds the mirror. “He had a powerful kind of ache inside him, half joy, half terrible sadness.” It is so full of emotion when Harry is so close to his parents, but is so far away and will never meet them. If this does not spark emotion in you, you are a lost cause. The only thing that I do not like about this book is that dumb luck saves Harry more than his knowledge or skill. I also love how Harry has an anonymous helper who gives him a broom and a cloak. He has someone looking over his back to take care of him. This is a wonderful book, I recommend it to everyone, and I will use it in my classroom if I teach older students.
I: The teaching connections for this book for me are many. One of the most obvious would be to get students interested in reading. Students quickly fall in love with this book and it will spark their interest to read the others. I also think this book is a great way to introduce fantasy to young students. This is one of the most captivating and interesting fantasy novels to date.