Harry Potter and the Philosopher s stone

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In Harry Potter and the Sor- cerer's Stone, Harry, an orp- han, lives with the Dursleys, his horrible aunt and uncle, and their abominable son, Dudley.

One day just before his eleventh birthday, an owl tries to deliver a mysterious letter—

the first of a sequence of events that end in Harry mee- ting a giant man named Ha- grid. Hagrid explains Harry's history to him: When he was a baby, the Dark wizard, Lord Voldemort, attacked and killed his parents in an attempt to kill Harry; but the only mark on Harry was a mysterious lightning-bolt scar on his forehead.

Now he has been invited to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where the headmaster is the great wizard Albus Dumble- dore. Harry visits Diagon Alley to get his school supplies, especially his very own wand. To get to school, he takes the Hogwarts Ex- press from platform nine and three-quarters at King's Cross Station. On the train, he meets two fellow students who will become his closest friends: Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger.

Harry is assigned to Gryffin- dor House at Hogwarts, and soon becomes the youngest -ever Seeker on the House Quidditch team. He also studies Potions with Profes- sor Severus Snape, who displays a deep and abiding dislike for Harry, and De- fense Against the Dark Arts with nervous Professor Quirrell; he and his friends defeat a mountain troll, help Hagrid raise a dragon, and explore the wonderful, fas- cinating world of Hogwarts.

But all events lead irrevoca- bly toward a second en- counter with Lord Volde- mort, who seeks an object of legend known as the Sorcerer's Stone...

(From the publisher.)

Contents:

Summary ¹

The Author and her work: J. K.

Rowling & Harry Potter

Early years ² Harry Potter

books

3

Life after Harry Potter

4

Subsequent writing ⁴

Reviews ⁵

Notes ⁶

Summary

BIBLIOTECA TECL A SALA

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone

October 15, 2015

J. K. Rowling

(Source: http://www.litlovers.com/reading-guides/15-young-adult-fiction/1210-harry- potter-and-the-sorcerers-stone-rowling)

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Joanne "Jo" Rowling, better known under the pen name J. K.

Rowling, is a British author known as the creator of the Harry Potter fantasy series, the idea for which was conceived while on a train trip from Man- chester to London in 1990. The Potter books have gained worldwide attention, won multiple awards, sold more than 400 million copies, and been the basis for a popular series of films.

Rowling is perhaps equally fa- mous for her "rags to riches" life story, in which she progressed from living on welfare to multi- millionaire status within five years. As of March 2010, when its latest world billionaires list was published, Forbes estimated Rowling's net worth to be $1 billion. The 2008 Sunday Ti- mes Rich List estimated Ro- wling's fortune at £560 million ($798 million), ranking her as the twelfth richest woman in Great Britain. Forbes ranked Rowling as the forty-eighth most power- ful celebrity of 2007,

and Time magazine named her as a runner-up for its 2007 Person of the Year, noting the social, moral, and political inspiration she has given her fandom. She has become a notable philanthro- pist, supporting such charities as Comic Relief, One Parent Fami- lies, Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain, and the Children's High Level Group.

Early years

Rowling was born to Peter James Rowling and Anne Rowling (nee Volant), on 31 July 1965 in Yate, Gloucestershire, England, 10 miles (16.1 km) northeast of Bristol. The family moved to the nearby village Winterbourne when Rowling was four. She

attended St Michael's Primary School, a school founded by abolitionist William Wilberforce.

(The school's headmaster has been suggested as the inspiration for Harry Potter's Albus Dum- bledore).

As a child, Rowling often wrote fantasy stories, which she would read to her sister. "I can still remember me telling her a story in which she fell down a rabbit hole and was fed strawberries by the rabbit family inside it. Cer- tainly the first story I ever wrote down (when I was five or six) was about a rabbit called

"Rabbit." He got the measles and was visited by his friends, inclu- ding a giant bee called Miss Bee."

When she was a young teenager, her great aunt gave her a very old copy of Jessica Mitford's autobiography, Hons and Rebels.

Mitford became Rowling's heroi- ne, and Rowling subsequently read all of her books.

She attended secondary school at Wyedean School and College, where her mother, Anne, had worked as a technician in the Science Department. Rowling has said of her adolescence,

"Hermione [A bookish, know-it- all Harry Potter character] is loosely based on me. She's a caricature of me when I was eleven, which I'm not particularly proud of." Sean Harris, her best friend in the Upper Sixth owned a turquoise Ford Anglia, which she says inspired the one in her books. "Ron Weasley [Harry Potter's best friend] isn't a living portrait of Sean, but he really is very Sean-ish."

Rowling read for a BA in French and Classics at the University of Exeter. After a year of study in

Paris, Rowling moved to London to work as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International.

In 1990, while she was on a four- hour-delayed train trip from Manchester to London, the idea for a story of a young boy atten- ding a school of wizardry "came fully formed" into her mind.

When she had reached her Clap- ham Junction flat, she began to write immediately. In December of that same year, Rowling’s mother died, after a ten-year battle with multiple sclerosis, a death that heavily affected her writing: she introduced much more detail about Harry's loss in the first book, because she knew about how it felt.

Rowling then moved to Porto, Portugal to teach English as a foreign language. While there she married Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes in 1992.

Their child, Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes (named after Jessica Mitford), was born in 1993 in Portugal. The couple separated in November 1993. In December 1993, Rowling and her daughter moved to be near her sister in Edinburgh, Scotland. During this period Rowling was diagnosed with clinical depression, which brought her the idea of Demen- tors, soul-sucking creatures introduced in the third book.

After Jessica's birth and the sepa- ration from her husband, Ro- wling had left her teaching job in Portugal. In order to teach in Scotland she would need a post- graduate certificate of education (PGCE), requiring a full-time, year-long course of study. She began this course in August 1995, after completing her first

The Author and her work: J. K. Rowling & Harry Potter

Author Bio

• Birth—July 31, 1965

• Where—Chipping Sodbury near Bristol, England (UK)

• Education—Exeter University

• Awards—3 Nestle Smarties Awards;

British Book Award- Children's Book of the Year; Children's Book Award; Whitbread Children's Book of the Year; British Book Awards-Author of the Year; British Book Awards-Book of the Year.

• Currently—lives in Perthshire, Scotland and London, England

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novel while having survived on state welfare support.

She wrote in many cafes, especially Nicolson's Cafe, whenever she could get Jessica to fall asleep. As she stated on the Ame- rican TV program A&E Bio- graphy, one of the reasons she wrote in cafes was not because her flat had no heat, but because taking her baby out for a walk was the best way to make her fall asleep.

Harry Potter books In 1995, Rowling finished her manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on an old manual typewriter. The book was submitted to twelve publis- hing houses, all of which rejected the manuscript. A year later she was finally given the green light (and a £1500 advance) by Bloomsbury, a small British pu- blishing house in London, En- gland. The decision to publish Rowling's book apparently owes much to Alice Newton, the eight -year-old daughter of Blooms- bury’s chairman, who was given the first chapter to review by her father and immediately deman- ded the next.

Although Bloomsbury agreed to publish the book, her editor Barry Cunningham says that he advised Rowling to get a day job, since she had little chance of making money in children’s books. Soon after, in 1997, Ro- wling received an £8000 grant from the Scottish Arts Council to enable her to continue writing. The following spring, an auction was held in the United States for the rights to publish the novel, and was won by Scho- lastic Inc., for $105,000. Rowling has said she “nearly died” when

she heard the news.

In June 1997, Bloomsbury published Philosopher’s Stone with an initial print-run of 1000 copies, five hundred of which were dis- tributed to libraries. Today, such copies are valued between

£16,000 and £25,000. Five months later, the book won its first award, a Nestle Smarties Book Prize. In February, the novel won the prestigious British Book Award for Children’s Book of the Year, and later, the Chil- dren’s Book Award. Its se- quel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, was published in July, 1998.

In December 1999, the third novel, Harry Potter and the Pri- soner of Azkaban, won the Smar- ties Prize, making Rowling the first person to win the award three times running. She later withdrew the fourth Harry Pot- ter novel from contention to allow other books a fair chance.

In January 2000,Prisoner of Az- kaban won the inaugural Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year award, though it lost the Book of the Year prize to Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf.

The fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was released simultaneously in the UK and the US on 8 July 2000, and broke sales records in both countries. Some 372,775 copies of the book were sold in its first day in the UK, almost equalling the number Prisoner of Az- kaban sold during its first year. In the US, the book sold three million copies in its first 48 hours, smashing all literary sales records. Rowling admitted that she had had a moment of crisis while

writing the novel; "Halfway through writing Four, I realised there was a serious fault with the plot....I've had some of my bla- ckest moments with this book...

One chapter I rewrote 13 times, though no-one who has read it can spot which one or know the pain it caused me." Rowling was named author of the year in the 2000 British Book Awards.

A wait of three years occurred between the release of Goblet of Fire and the fifth Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Or- der of the Phoenix. This gap led to press speculation that Rowling had developed writer's block, speculations she fervently denied.

Rowling later admitted that writing the book was a chore. "I think Phoenix could have been shorter", she told Lev Grossman,

"I knew that, and I ran out of time and energy toward the end."

The sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was released on 16 July 2005. It too broke all sales records, selling nine million copies in its first 24 hours of release. While writing, she told a fan online, "Book six has been planned for years, but before I started writing seriously I spend two months re-visiting the plan and making absolutely sure I knew what I was doing."

She noted on her website that the opening chapter of book six, which features a conversation between the Minister of Magic and the British Prime Minister, had been intended as the first chapter first forPhilosopher's Stone, then Chamber of Se- crets then Prisoner of Azkaban.

In 2006, Half-Blood Princerecei- ved the Book of the Year prize at the British Book Awards.

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released in July, 2007, (0:00 BST) and broke its predecessor's record as the fastest-selling book of all time. It sold 11 million copies in the first day of release in the United Kingdom and United States. She has said that the last chapter of the book was written "in so- mething like 1990", as part of her earliest work on the entire series. During a year period when Rowling was completing the last book, she allowed herself to be filmed for a documentary which aired in Britain on ITV on 30 December 2007. It was entitled J K Rowling... A Year In The Life and showed her returning to her old Edinburgh tenement flat where she lived, and completed the first Harry Potter book. Re- visiting the flat for the first time reduced her to tears, saying it was "really where I turned my life around completely."

Harry Potter is now a global brand worth an estimated £7 billion ($15 billion), and the last four Harry Potter books have consecutively set records as the fastest-selling books in history.

The series, totalling 4,195 pages, has been translated, in whole or in part, into 65 languages.

The Harry Potter books have also gained recognition for spar- king an interest in reading among the young at a time when children were thought to be abando- ning books for computers and television, although the series' overall impact on children's reading habits has been questio- ned.

Life after Harry Potter Forbes has named Rowling as the first person to become a U.S.-

dollar billionaire by writing books, the second-richest female entertainer and the 1,062nd richest person in the world.

When first listed as a billionaire by Forbes in 2004, Rowling dis- puted the calculations and said she had plenty of money, but was not a billionaire. In addition, the 2008 Sunday Times Rich List named Rowling the 144th richest person in Britain. In 2001, Ro- wling purchased a luxurious nine- teenth-century estate house, Killiechassie House, on the banks of the River Tay, near Aberfeldy, in Perth and Kinross, Scotland.

Rowling also owns a home in Merchiston, Edinburgh, and a

£4.5 million ($9 million) Geor- gian house in Kensington, West London, (on a street with 24- hour security).

On 26 December 2001, Rowling married Neil Michael Murray (born 30 June 1971), an anaest- hetist, in a private ceremony at her Aberfeldy home. Their son was born in 2003 and a daughter in 2005.

In the UK, Rowling has received honorary degrees from St An- drews University, the University of Edinburgh, Napier University, the University of Exeter and the University of Aberdeen; and in the US, from Harvard. She has been awarded the Légion d'honneur by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. (During the Elysée Pala- ce ceremony, she revealed that her maternal French grandfather had also received the Légion d'honneur for his bravery during World War I.) According to Matt Latimer, a former White House administrator for Presi- dent George W. Bush, Rowling was turned down for the Presi- dential Medal of Freedom becau-

se administration officials belie- ved that the Harry Potter series promoted witchcraft.

Subsequent writing

Rowling has stated that she plans to continue writing, preferably under a pseudonym. Although she "thinks it's unlikely" that she will write another Harry Potter, an "encyclopedia" of wizarding along with unpublished notes may be published sometime in the future. In March 2008, Ro- wling revealed in interview that she had returned to writing in Edinburgh cafes, intent on com- posing a new novel for children.

"I will continue writing for children because that's what I en- joy," she told the Daily Tele- graph. "I am very good at finding a suitable cafe; I blend into the crowd and, of course, I don't sit in the middle of the bar staring all around me."

In spite of these declarations, in the past few years Rowling has written three books for adult readers, The Casual Vacan- cy (2012) and—under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith—

thecrime fiction novels The Cu- ckoo's Calling (2013) and The Silkworm (2014).

(Adapted from Wikipedia.)

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You don't have to be a wizard or a kid to appreciate the spell cast by Harry Potter.

USA Today

A wonderful first novel.... Harry is destined for greatness...and one day he mysteriously receives a notice in the mail announcing that he has been chosen to attend Hogwarts, the nation's elite school for training wizards and witches, the Harvard of sorcery.

Before he is done, Harry Potter will meet a dragon, make friends with a melancholy centaur and do battle with a three-headed dog.... Through all this hocus- pocus is delightful, the magic in the book is not the real magic of the book. Much like Roald Dahl, J.K. Rowling has a gift for keeping the emotions, fears and triumphs of her characters on a human scale, even while the supernatu- ral is popping out all over.

Michael Winerip - New York Times Book Review

When Harry's parents die, he has no idea of his real heritage or his destiny. He is treated dastardly by his neglectful aunt and uncle but from the moment of his eleventh birthday, he is summoned to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry where his training begins. The reader embarks on an adventure that continues through the very last page. 309 pages of entertainment filled with magic, sorcery, good vs. evil and a courageous prota- gonist, eleven-year-old Harry Potter.

Children's Literature Harry Potter, who believes that his parents were killed in a car accident when he was a baby, lives with his dreadful relatives, the Dursleys. Imagine his surprise

when, on his eleventh birthday, he is invited to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizar- dry. Harry learns that he is a wizard, just as his parents had been, and that he survived the attack in which they were killed battling the evil Voldemort. At Hogwarts, Harry discovers his natural skill at Quidditch, a type of three-dimensional rugby played on flying brooms; he tas- tes new treats such as "Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans," which truly do come in every flavor from strawberry and coffee to sardine and ear wax; and he learns that there is evil afoot at the school. Harry and his friends, Ron and Hermoine, discover that someone at the school is trying to steal a priceless stone with the power to make a person immortal. In a breathtaking final showdown, Harry faces Volde- mort and saves the stone, but not before he nearly loses his life. Rowling's style is a cross between Roald Dahl and Patricia Wrede. First published in Britain, where it won the British Natio- nal Book Award for Children's Book of the Year as well as the Smarties Prize, this hilarious and suspenseful book will delight American audiences as well.

VOYA

(Starred review.) Readers are in for a delightful romp with this debut from a British author who dances in the footsteps of P.L.

Travers and Roald Dahl.

Publishers Weekly

A rousing first novel, an award- winner in England. Harry is just a baby when his magical parents are done in by Voldemort, a wizard so dastardly other wizards are scared to mention his name. So Harry is brought up by

his mean Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia Dursley, and picked on by his horrid cousin Dudley. He knows nothing about his magical birthright until 10 years later, when he learns he's to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Hogwarts is a lot like English boarding school, except that instead of classes in math and grammar, the curricu- lum features courses in Transfi- guration, Herbology, and Defen- se Against the Dark Arts. Harry becomes the star player of Quid- ditch, a sort of mid-air ball game.

With the help of his new friends Ron and Hermione, Harry solves a mystery involving a sorcerer's stone that ultimately takes him to the evil Voldemort. This hugely enjoyable fantasy is filled with imaginative details, from oddly flavored jelly beans to dra- gons' eggs hatched on the hearth.

It's slanted toward action- oriented readers, who will find that Briticisms meld with all the other wonders of magic school.

Kirkus Reviews

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Reviews

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Notes

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www.l-h.cat/biblioteques

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