Wd Y Y itibaren Narcastet, Francie
Harry is a boy living with his aunt and uncle after being orphaned as a young boy. His Aunt & Uncle treat him with animosity and are terribly neglectful to Harry. On his birthday, it is revealed that Harry is a wizard. Harry is taken to Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to begin his education and training as a young wizard. While there, befriends Hermoine Granger and Ron Weasley. Together they fight the dark wizard Lord Voldemort who is responsible for murdering Harry's parents. I have never been a fan of modern fantasy as I thought I only liked stories that could really happen. Because of this, I never read any of the Harry Potter books until a friend of mine leant me the book and I had nothing else to read in the house. I immediately fell in love with the book and could not put it down. I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning every night devouring the entire series from start to finish in a few weeks. I was actually depressed when I finished the series because I did not want it to end! J.K. Rowling changed my opinion of modern fantasy and I now call myself a fan. I have read the entire series twice and there are not many books that I am willing to read more than one time. Publication Date: 1999 Themes: social inequality (mudblood vs. pureblood, Malfoys' upper class status vs Weasley's lower class status), magic, death, authority (Snape, his Aunt and Uncle). Awards: ALA Notable Children's Book 1998 & various state awards. Grades: 4-12 Classroom uses: There is so much you can do with this book (and the entire series), but I will just list a few. Students can conduct a Webquest to research different magical creatures and create their own catalog or pamphlet of magical creatures. Students can work on letter writing skilla by using the "Owl Post" to write to certain character's in the book asking them questions (or to each other). Students can choose a character from a book and analyze their character traits. They can create a poster about that character.
This was one of those weird things where I didn't care much for the characters but found the book fairly readable. I was going through a very very hard personal time and found books extremely comforting. The writing is quite nice, with plenty of atmosphere, but it became tiresome to hear about Maisie's appearance; and it was even more tiresome that everything was done quickly. If I read that word one more time, I was going to scream. Thesaurus? How could an editor not pick that out and make some changes? But most difficult for me in reading this is that I couldn't connect to Maisie at all. I understand there's a class system, and the further back you go in history, the stronger its pull in England. Still, Maisie sure seems to have forgotten her roots. We are told how she lost her fiancé, a wealthy man she met in college, during WWI, but we are never quite told how Maisie managed to become such a snob. Highly unrecommended.