Customer Rating: 
Summary: Functions differently for children and adults.
Comment: I'm a 20 year old college student in the United States and I read HP on a long car ride over Thankgiving. Here's my observations, for what they're worth:Harry Potter is not popular solely because of the hype machine associated with it. Contrary to what certain elitists will tell you, the average person is not some mindless puppet to be jerked around by big corporations and advertisers. If Harry Potter was a bad book with a good publicity campaign, it would do what bad movies with good publicity campaigns do: make a ton of money initially until bad word of mouth killed it. Harry Potter is a good book--not a great book--but better than some of the "serious" literature currently popular in academic circles, destined to gether dust in the Ivory Tower's attic in ten years.
HP worked for me not so much as an adventure story but as a coming-of-age tale in what is to me (a decidedly non-American educated in public [state run] schools) a strange environment. I thought the book was at its best when it described the everyday experiences of Harry & Co., and bogged down a bit when it came time for the "adventure". I recognize that this is a children's novel, and so the adventure part of the plot must necessarily be kept simple, but an adult who reads regularly will probably find themselves wishing Rowling would have spent a little more time developing the world she's constructed before sending our hero do battle with Voldemort.
Harry Potter is not Hamlet, it's not A Tale of Two Cities, and it's not Ulysses (thank God!). It's not even Alice in Wonderland. That's fine. It's not trying to be, and nobody ever claimed it is. What it is is a neat little coming-of-age tale with a heaping dose of adventure, that just happens to be prying kids away from the TV, the Playstation, and the Internet long enough to read a book, a task our teachers, parents, librarians, academics, and most especially our politicians have thus far failed at miserably.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I am rating the Teaching Guide, not the book!
Comment: This teaching guide is very poor. It has very little reproducible material, is not suitable for higher middle level (grades 7 and 8) and gives a cursory sweep through the story adding little that I hadn't thought of myself. I hope others come out with better guides, since this one is doing me absolutely no good. Even the project ideas were dull and unimaginative. Librarians and teachers: Don't waste your money on this one!
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Summary: There's more to the book, than just fun.
Comment: This book, though many people think so, was not written for children only. I was actually written for everybody, because there are something to find in yourself, even if you are an adult. You may have read the book and think that it is just a book for children. But you are wrong. The book is loaded with interesting views on real life. For example, in the best school for normal people, to prepare the kids for future life, kids are required to carry a stick to hit each other when the teachers are not looking. So when you read it again, considering this approach, I believe you will like it more.
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Summary: This Book Rules
Comment: This book rules. It's a cool fantasy adventure. Harry flys a broom. He uses magic. The is really cool.
