Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
By: J.K. Rowling
Published in 2000 by Raincoast Books
Review by Nick Ferens
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is about a young boy named Harry who is a
wizard and resides with his uncle, aunt and cousin (Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia and Dudley)
in London. He resides with his uncle because his parents were killed at a very young age by
the dark lord who goes by Voldemort. Essentially, he is one of the best and most evil
wizards in the world. When Harry’s parents were killed by Lord Voldemort, Harry should’ve
been killed as well. However, he survived and was known as “The Boy who Lived”.
Anyways, he grew up with his uncle and aunt who treated him very poorly. He lived
with them up until the age of 11 when he started to get mysterious letters inviting him to
“Hogwarts, the school of Witchcraft and Wizardry”. He ends up attending this school, being
very new to this as his uncle and aunt didn’t tell him his parents were wizards. He didn’t
even know how his parents had been killed up until a couple of days
before he attended Hogwarts for his first time. Harry ends up having a
blast at Hogwarts meeting a lot of friends such as Ron and Hermione.
He also meets enemies such as Malfoy, Crabb and Goyle. As Harry
progress through his term, he hears of the “Philosopher’s Stone” and
also finds out that Voldemort wants it and may be in the school. Harry
also starts to wonder why he survived Voldemort’s attack, as he was
the first one to ever do so.
I really liked this book. This was about my 5th time reading this
book and it never gets worse. The whole book is action packed with
Harry and his friends leading most of this action. Once you get to the
last 50 pages or so, you will not want to put this book down because
there’s so much action and a lot of thrilling moments. This is also the first of 7 books in the
whole Harry Potter series and is definitely a very great start to the series mainly because of
how much action is in it. The series only gets better but you have to read the books in order
or you won’t be able to understand the storyline. Overall, I give this book a 9.5/10,
deducting it a half mark because the beginning of the book is a little stale and is hard to get
into. I might just be saying that because it’s my fifth read through, but I definitely
recommend you try reading it yourself!