A Good Read

Quotation from JKR "I had been writing almost continuously since the age of six but I had never been so excited about an idea before. I simply sat and thought, for four (delayed train) hours, and all the details bubbled up in my brain, and this scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who did not know he was a wizard became more and more real to me."

Points of interest JKR says: The stories show the difference between: – what is right, and – what is easy What does J.K. stand for? What is the important difference between Harry Potter and other fantasy stories? – e.g. the Narnia books, Lord of the Rings How many languages has HP been translated into? (Including Latin and Ancient Greek!) Why is the English version still popular in non-English speaking countries? How much money does JKR have?

The books Page 89 C1 1.Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone 2.Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets 3.Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban 4.Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire 5.Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 6.Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince 7.Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

1.Where is Edinburgh? 2.Why is café spelt thus? 3.What’s Amazon.co.uk? 4.Who is “our hero”? 5.Who does “our” refer to? 6.Where is Manchester? 7.What does “born” mean, here? 8.Why does JKR say “Very imaginative”? 9.Why did JKR choose to be an author, actually? 10.What does “consider” mean here? 11.Why does JKR mention “invisible train platforms”? 12.What is the number of the platform she mentions? 13.Why must JKR be “careful”? 14.Who was cleverer, Hermione or JKR at 11? 15.How do you pronounce “re- read”? 16.Why is the past perfect tense used in lines 39-40? 17.What are the two special features of Quidditch? 18.Translate “some of them … believe worked”? Do you understand the grammar? 19.What does “set out” mean? 20.What does “for some reason” mean? 21.Translate “I have been known” (NOT 知道 or 認識 !) 22.Why is the last sentence funny?

Can you remember the first book? It has a different name in the UK and America! Harry Potter and the …’s stone Why doesn’t Harry live with his parents? Who does he live with? Is Harry happy in Privet Drive?

Nearly ten years had passed since the Dursleys had woken up to find their nephew on the front step, but Privet Drive had hardly changed at all. The sun rose on the same tidy front gardens and lit up the brass number four on the Dursleys' front door; it crept into their living room, which was almost exactly the same as it had been on the night when Mr. Dursley had seen that fateful news report about the owls. Only the photographs on the mantelpiece really showed how much time had passed. Ten years ago, there had been lots of pictures of what looked like a large pink beach ball wearing different-colored bonnets - but Dudley Dursley was no longer a baby, and now the photographs showed a large blond boy riding his first bicycle, on a carousel at the fair, playing a computer game with his father, being hugged and kissed by his mother. The room held no sign at all that another boy lived in the house, too.