Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Harry Potter is an ordinary boy who lives in a cupboard under the stairs at his Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon's house, which he thinks is normal for someone like him who's parents have been killed in a 'car crash'. He is bullied by them and his fat, spoilt cousin Dudley, and lives a very unremarkable life with only the odd hiccup (like his hair growing back overnight!) to cause him much to think about. That is until an owl turns up with a letter addressed to Harry and all hell breaks loose! He is literally rescued by a world where nothing is as it seems and magic lessons are the order of the day. Read and find out how Harry discovers his true heritage at Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft, the reason behind his parents mysterious death, who is out to kill him, and how he uncovers the most amazing secret of all time, the fabled Philosopher's Stone! All this and muggles too. Now, what are they? This is Jo's first book and she has already written seven outlines for Harry's further adventures at Hogwarts. She lives in Edinburgh.

J.K.Rowlimg

J.K (Joanne Kathleen) Rowling is a British author best known as the creator of the Harry Potter fantasy series including Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone,Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the idea for which was conceived whilst on a train trip from Manchester to London in 1990.

Rowling was born to Peter James Rowling and Anne Rowling (née Volant), on 31 July 1965 in Yate, Gloucestershire, England, 10 miles  northeast of Bristol. She attended St Michael's Primary School, a school founded almost 200 years ago by famed abolitionist William Wilberforce and education reformer Hannah More. Her elderly headmaster at St Michael's, Alfred Dunn, was claimed as the inspiration for the Harry Potter character Albus Dumbledore.

As a child, Rowling enjoyed writing fantasy stories, which she often read to her sister. "I can still remember me telling her a story in which she fell down a rabbit hole and was fed strawberries by the rabbit family inside it," she recalls, "Certainly the first story I ever wrote down (when I was five or six) was about a rabbit called Rabbit. He got the measles and was visited by his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee."

In 1990, while she was on a four-hour-delayed train trip from Manchester to London, the idea for a story of a young boy attending a school of wizardry "came fully formed" into her mind. "I really don't know where the idea came from", she told The Boston Globe, "It started with Harry, then all these characters and situations came flooding into my head." When she had reached her Clapham Junction flat, she began to write immediately.

However, in December of that year, Rowling’s mother died, after her ten-year battle with multiple sclerosis.Rowling commented, "I was writing Harry Potter at the moment my mother died. I had never told her about Harry Potter."Rowling said this death heavily affected her writing and that she introduced much more detail about Harry's loss in the first book, because she knew about how it felt.

Rowling then moved to Porto, Portugal to teach English as a foreign language. While there, on 16 October 1992, she married Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes. Their one child, Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes (named after Jessica Mitford), was born on 27 July 1993 in Portugal.They separated in November 1993 In December 1994, Rowling and her daughter moved to be near her sister in Edinburgh, Scotland.During this period Rowling was diagnosed with clinical depression, and contemplated suicide.It was the feeling of her illness which brought her the idea of Dementors, soulless creatures featured in Harry Potter.

After Jessica's birth and the separation from her husband, Rowling had left her teaching job in Portugal. In order to teach in Scotland she would need a postgraduate certificate of education, requiring a full-time, year-long course of study. She began this course in August 1995,after completing her first novel while having survived on welfare. She wrote in many cafés, especially Nicolson's Café, whenever she could get Jessica to fall asleep.In a 2001 BBC interview, Rowling denied the rumour that she wrote in local cafés to escape from her unheated flat, remarking, "I am not stupid enough to rent an unheated flat in Edinburgh in midwinter. It had heating." Instead, as she stated on the American TV program A&E Biography, one of the reasons she wrote in cafés was because taking her baby out for a walk was the best way to make her fall asleep.

"A wonderful first novel....Harry is destined for greatness....Much like Roald Dahl, J.K. Rowling has a gift for keeping the emotions, fears, and triumphs of her characters on a human scale, even while the supernatural is popping out all over."

                                                 Michael Winerip, The New York Times Book Review

"Obviously, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone should make any modern 11-year-old a very happy reader. The novel moves quickly, packs in everything from a boa constrictor that winks to a melancholy Zen-spouting centaur to an owl postal system, and ends with a scary surprise."

                                                  Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World

"This hugely enjoyable fantasy is filled with imaginative details, from oddly flavored jelly beans to dragons' eggs hatched on the hearth. It's slanted toward action-oriented readers, who will find that Briticisms meld with all the other wonders of magic school."

"A charming, imaginative, magical confection of a novel."

                                                 The Boston Globe

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