Goodreads Reviews: Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

For almost 11 years, Harry Potter has lived under the stiffing care of his relatives, the Dursleys. Ignored, overlooked, and even abused, Harry lives just trying to survive to the next day. He knows nothing about his parents, except that they were killed in a car crash when he was a baby and that was where he received his strange lightening bolt shaped scar on his forehead. There are other strange things about Harry. Being able to fly to the top of the school roof when dodging his bullying cousin, his hair quickly growing back and even making things disappear.

Then the letters came. Letters from no one that his aunt and uncle don't want him to read. Yet, the letters keep coming. Until finally, the moment Harry turns 11 years old, he meets a giant who gives him his mysterious letter and reveals to him what his aunt and uncle have been hiding (and lying to him) all his life.

He's a wizard. Just like his mom and dad. And that his mom and dad were murdered by a nefarious dark wizard, but he as a baby survived with only the scar on his head. And his survival defeated this dark wizard, making him, Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived and the most famous child in the hidden Wizarding World.

Immediately Harry is taken from his terrible foster home and is immersed into the extraordinary Wizarding World that invisibly coincides with the non-magic (or Muggle) world. Harry's letter delivers him to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He meets the lively Weasleys and befriends their youngest son, Ron. He endures the know-it-all Hermione Granger who also had a non-magic upbringing. And he goes head to head with Draco Malfoy, his rival and enemy from a wealthy pureblood family.

While at Hogwarts Harry learns about the popular wizarding sport Quidditch and how to fly a broom. His classes vary from turning frogs into teacups to making potions. And his teachers are just as different from stuttering professor Quirrell to harsh and demanding Professor Severus Snape, who takes an immediate hatred to Harry and finally, Hogwarts headmaster, the legendary Albus Dumbledore.

In no time at all Harry and his friends are fighting trolls, running from monsters in the Forbidden Forest, coming across three headed dogs and discovering of a dangerous nemesis right within the halls of Hogwarts. Through all this, Harry begins to learn more about his parents, their deaths and why he is so important to the Wizarding World. And that's only the beginning.

No matter how many times I read this book, I fall in love with Harry Potter and his journey all over again. Rowling probably had no idea that her little story about a boy who lived in a broom closet and finds out that he's a wizard would have the world wide and generational success that it has garnered, but Harry Potter remains just as loved now as it was over 20 years ago.