Harry Potter
by J.K. Rowling
- Series
- 7 books
- Genre
- Fantasy for children, teenagers and adults
- Age
- ages 9 and up
About the series
Harry Potter grows up in a cupboard under the stairs at the Dursleys’ house on Privet Drive, where nobody will talk about his parents. On his eleventh birthday, he finds out that he is a wizard and that a place is waiting for him at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. There he meets Ron and Hermione, is sorted into Gryffindor and discovers that the whole wizarding world knows his name, because as a baby he survived an attack by Voldemort.
Each book follows one school year. It starts as a story about finding friends and a place to belong, with Quidditch, secret passages and teachers you can never quite see through. But the books grow up with the reader. From the fourth book on, the tone gets darker, the stakes get higher, and the questions are about death, betrayal and choices that can’t be undone. It is one of the few series where you can feel a whole childhood and adolescence pass between the first page and the last.
The series suits readers from around 9 and up, but it also holds up for adults who reread it with different eyes.
The books in the series
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Danish: Harry Potter og De Vises Sten, 1997)
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Danish: Harry Potter og Hemmelighedernes Kammer, 1998)
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Danish: Harry Potter og Fangen fra Azkaban, 1999)
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Danish: Harry Potter og Flammernes Pokal, 2000)
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Danish: Harry Potter og Fønixordenen, 2003)
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Danish: Harry Potter og Halvblodsprinsen, 2005)
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Danish: Harry Potter og Dødsregalierne, 2007)
My thoughts
I have read the series several times, in both Danish and English. Otherwise I almost never reread books, because I remember the plot, and then the suspense is gone. Harry Potter is the exception. Once you know the ending, you start noticing all the small clues laid down along the way, and it becomes a new kind of reading. Reading it in English after the Danish edition was also a new way of experiencing the same story.