Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone Review

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(More customer reviews)With the release of the last film in the series, I thought this was probably a good time to begin re-reading the series. I read the first one ten years ago, just before the first film. Upon second reading, I'm struck by the fact that this novel doesn't seem like a children's book, even though it has the cover, the illustrations and all the other window dressing of one. It's no more a children's book than Tolkien's Hobbit or Lord of the Rings and, in fact, it seems Dickensian in its wealth of characters seen through the perspective of a main character that is a child, like Oliver Twist or the early portions of David Copperfield. In fact, if Charles Dickens were magically transported into the late 20th/early 21st century and somehow chose to write fantasy, this is what it would look like. Actually, Harry, Hermione and Ron sound much older than eleven years at this point; they're certainly dealing with more imminent danger than most eleven year olds, and throughout the series the stakes will rise higher and the danger will become more intense. Harry, in particular, experiences all the growing pains of adolescence PLUS the ever present portents of his fate, which was established almost from his birth. Almost all of the characteristics of the archetypal hero's journey are present here and they're all presented in the guise of a book that millions of children world wide have devoured. I wonder if, at some point, some sociological/anthropological study might be made of the impact of this series on the generation that was the exact chronological counterpart to Harry and his friends. In what ways has it influenced their outlooks and the decisions they've made. Since this series has probably been the most widely read 'children's' series that was also embraced by the general reading public I would think the impact would be even greater than previous enormously popular series. This first book remains a powerful beginning to a series that gets more imaginative, denser, darker and profound as it progresses.

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