Harry Potter has never been the star of a Quidditch team, scoring points while riding a broom far above the ground. He knows no spells, has never helped to hatch a dragon, and has never worn a cloak of invisibility.

All he knows is a miserable life with the Dursleys, his horrible aunt and uncle, and their abominable son, Dudley - a great big swollen spoiled bully. Harry's room is a tiny closet at the foot of the stairs, and he hasn't had a birthday party in eleven years.

But all that is about to change when a mysterious letter arrives by owl messenger: a letter with an invitation to an incredible place that Harry - and anyone who reads about him - will find unforgettable.

For it's there that he finds not only friends, aerial sports, and magic in everything from classes to meals, but a great destiny that's been waiting for him... if Harry can survive the encounter.

This book is the winner of numerous awards. It was recognised by the Book Sense Book of the Year Award. It was recognised in the Grades 4-8 category by the Young Reader's Choice Award. It also was recognised by the Rebecca Caudill Young Readers Book Award.

This is volume 1 in Harry Potter .

There are 309 pages in this book. This book was published 1999 by Scholastic US .

J K Rowling grew up in a small village on the English/Welsh border. In 1990, after moving to London, she was sitting on a delayed train back home from Manchester when she had the idea of a boy wizard who went to wizarding school. It took a year for her agent Christopher Little to find a publisher. Lots of them turned it down. In June 1997 Bloomsbury published Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone under the name J. K. Rowling. The next six books of the Harry Potter series took her nearly another 10 years to write and publish, with the movies based on the books released in between publications. JK also wrote three short Hogwarts Library companion books for charity: Quidditch Through the Ages and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them in aid of Comic Relief, and The Tales of Beedle the Bard in aid of Lumos. In 2016 she worked with playwright Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany to continue Harrys story in a stage play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which opened in London, followed by the USA and Australia. She also wrote the screenplay for the film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the first in a series of new adventures, taking place before the time of Harry Potter, featuring wizarding world magizoologist Newt Scamander, the author of the book she created for Comic Relief in 2001. The second film, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, was released in 2018, and the third in 2022. JK has also written The Ickabog, and The Christmas Pig, a standalone adventure story about a boys love for his most treasured thing and how far he will go to find it. The author lives in Scotland with her family and two dogs. https://stories. jkrowling. com/en-us/home/