Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

The second book Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets has a darker overall tone than the first book. It's more of a murder mystery, and although people die in the first book, and not the second, the second one brings the danger more to the reader's attention. It has all the feeling of a murder mystery.

Synopsis

The second book starts out with Harry back at the Dursley's and wishing for school to start again. The magical world quickly invades Private Dr. before the start of term, and Harry is warned not to go to Hogwarts this year as there is a terrible plot about to happen.

As we continue on it looks as if Harry might not make it to school after all. The Dursley's have locked him in his room and threatned to never let him out, while practically starving him. Luckily, the Weasley's rescue Harry, so we get to go to The Burrow, (the Weasley's house) and find out more about the magical world.

Harry is thrust into much more dangerous and frightening situations this year than he was last. Among them, an evil shop down a dark alley, a giant spider's lair, a huge snake, or basilisk, and the mistrust of his classmates making unfounded accusations against him.

If you don't wish to run into spoilers, then, I suggest you stop here and go on to a different page.

My ranking and favorites

OK, this was my favorite of the books until four came out. Why? It's such an intriguing storyline! It shows Harry at some of his best, courage, loyalty, innocence, and determination to do what's right. Plus Lockhart is always good for a laugh (even if you do want to strangle him at the same time!).

Some of my favorite parts in here are:
• When Harry escapes
• Harry's interaction with the Weasley's at the Burrow
• Mrs. Weasley
• Ginny's crush
• Malfoy getting in trouble in Knockturn Alley
• Snape being dissapointed by Harry's triumphant return to Hogwarts
• Colin Creevy
• The deathday party
• The dueling club
• Moaning Myrtle
• When Harry and Ron fooled Malfoy with the Polyjuice potion
• Hermione's cat hair
• Lockhart's valentine suggestions
• Harry's valentine
• Harry and Ron's adventure down to the chamber
• Harry in the chamber
• Harry's triumph over Tom Riddle
• Harry's chat with Dumbledore
• Harry freeing Dobby

Above are the differing illustrations of Harry from the second book covers. I was pretty dissatisfied with all of them. Daniel Radcliffe comes the closest to my idea of what Harry looked like, so I added him in.

Mistakes in book 1

We'll start off with the covers and you can see them by visiting another site via the links page.

Covers

I think it's awful how little attention some of these artists paid to Rowling's descriptions. Harry is still seen in most of the covers with muggle clothing on. If wizards wore muggle clothing all the time they wouldn't be wearing robes. (And the fiasco at the Quidditch world cup wouldn't have been quite as humerous) Uncle Vernon dislikes these "weirdos" for a reason! Secondly, still, an astounding number of them feature our hero with brown hair, one of them even looks blond! Two of the covers have Harry flying on a book? (where in the world did that come from?), and on one of them he looks like he's an elf or something. There's a cover that still shows our heros wearing those ridiculous looking joker outfits. One of the covers has Fawkes as a yellow bird. Other covers focus on other features of the book and include the basilisk (always as a different species of snake, one is a cobra. yuk.) Ford Anglia at least is blue in most of them. One has an intriguing cover tinted green and yellow (I actually love this cover, though it doesn't depict Harry but just the moon and a snake). Overall, the adult books were better, but that's not saying much as they hardly try to depict anything from the novel anyway.

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Book 1

Book 3

Book 4

Book 5

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