Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

The first book Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is also known as Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. The American publishers changed the name to make it sound more exciting. This is one of the things that Rowling says she wishes she hadn't let them change. There are a few differences in wording between the American and British versions. British slang and terms that wouldn't make sense to us yanks were changed to be more reader friendly. For example.....Harry gets a sweater for Christmas in Sorcerer's Stone. In Britain, he gets a jumper. It's the same thing really, just a different term. There is an excellent site called The Harry Potter Lexicon that has all the differences marked out for those readers curious enough to know. Look for it on the links page! The Philosopher's Stone is a legend that says whoever can produce the stone, will be able to turn any metal into gold, and produce the elixer of life making the drinker immortal. Nicholas Flamel is said to have been the only alchemist in history to make one. Hmmm....know anyone by the name of Flamel?

Above are the differing illustrations of Harry from the first 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.

Synopsis

This is our introduction to Harry and the magical world, so a lot of the story goes toward explaining things. Harry's past is one of the first things needing explained to us, so before we even get to meet our hero, we hear of his triumph over He-who-must-not-be-named. It might not mean as much to us now as it will later, but certainly we'll come to appreciate it as Harry does.

Harry gets introduced to the magical world, the truth about his parents' deaths (or as much as we know yet anyway), and finds out he's a wizard. He is accepted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and goes to recieve his training in the magical arts. By the way, if you're thinking you can read this book and then be able to preform magic, think again! This is Not an instruction book to witchcraft. It's a wonderful fantasy adventure.

This book gives us the basics of everything. Harry's life, the magical world, some magical laws, and the charectors we will come to love, and hate, and love to hate. Sound boring? Think again! Because.....dum, dum, dum, dum DUUUUUUUMMMMMMMM.....there is a mystery that happens at Hogwarts Harry's first year. And he is thick in the middle of it! Among other things he has to get through lessons, avoid detentions, have a midnight duel, get rid of an illegal dragon, put a three-headed-dog to sleep, and avoid the trap of the mirror of Erised. If you don't want any spoilers, I suggest you move on to a different page now.

My ranking and favorites

OK, this has to be my least favorite of the four books. Why? Because there is so much more that goes on in the other books. Harry is learning most things here, and so are we. It isn't a slow book by any means, but of the four, it's the shortest. Good enough reason? Ok, moving on.....

Some of my favorite parts in here are:
• When Dudley grows a tail
• When Harry gets sorted into Gryffindor and the Weasley twins yell: "We got Potter, we got Potter!"
• When Harry and Ron save Hermione from the troll
• When Harry gets picked for the Quidditch team (and opens his broom, so there Malfoy! HA!)
• When our favorite trio help Hagrid out with Norbert
• All of Chapter 12. The Mirror of Erised. It's very touching.
• Harry's first real Christmas
• All of the times Hagrid lets things slip
• All of their adventure to get the stone
• Dumbledore's chat with Harry (Don't you just love Dumbledore?)
• Hagrid's gift to Harry (the photo album, not the wooden flute)

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 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, an astounding number of them feature our hero with brown hair, one forgot his glasses, one of them made his lighting scar look like an open wound, one has the sorting hat as a top hat with lip prints on top! And what is with the rat costume!????! Other covers focus on other features of the book and include Hedwig (sometimes as a different species of owl!) and the Hogwarts Express (Sadly as a plain grey or black train instead of its brilliant scarlet). One cover has all our heros dressed in jokers outfits, minus the three coned hats, and looking very sneaky, and one cover has him flying with no broom (umm...ok, no one can fly unassisted here). There are a few that don't try to illustrate all of Harry but instead have a silouhette, or his feet and the end of a broomstick. One has an intriguing cover tinted red, green and yellow (I actually love this cover, though it doesn't depict Harry but just the scenery and hedwig), and there's a purple one with yellow stars and a wizard in black and white on the cover (I'm assuming it's supposed to be Dumbledore as he has a white beard. His costume is pretty cool, but what is with the staff? This is NOT Gandalf!).

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Book 2

Book 3

Book 4

Book 5

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