Publishers have my sympathy. If I try to put myself in the place of an editor picking this manuscript from the pile I can say with some certainty that I would not have recognized it as the ticket to a multi-billion dollar prize. I would have thought to myself that it was a good fun read, revisiting the magic-school trope and doing a fine job for children in the 8 to 12 range. If I hadn't had anything better land on my desk I might have published it, but then again, like quite a number of publishers, I might have passed in favour of a book I liked better. 
 I read this maybe 15 years back so I could share in what was exciting my three kids at the time. And I've read it twice to my daughter, Celyn. We read the first 5 some years back, and now she's 12 we're going to read the whole lot. She's very disabled and can't read for herself (she can't hold the book or see the page for starters...) 
 Having just finished I've checked the shelves to discover we have two copies of book 1 and two copies of book 3, but none of book 2. So JKR will be getting some more of my money shortly! 
 To the review... I liked the book. I have no idea why it has sold a gazzilion copies more than any other children's book or why so many adults are so taken with it. JKR writes solid enough prose, though her addiction to adverbs in dialogue tags irks me no end, he said testily. She writes a fun and inventive story, though the internal inconsistencies would have distressed me even as a child. Why do the finest wizards in the land leave a great treasure guarded only by a series of puzzles rather than actual defences? If in the final scenes the puzzle poem hadn't been left to give the solution to the potion test ... or the key hadn't been left in the same room as the door that wouldn't yield to magic ... would that not have been a better way to defend the treasure? Yes ... it was more fun this way, but ... dammit ... kids aren't stupid... 
 But yes, funny and inventive magic, school dynamics of making friends and enemies, the hijinx, the evil baddie, the chosen one... it's all good. Celyn certainly enjoyed it. She's on team Hermionie. 
 The only other thing that really bothered me was the repeated insinuation, present even in the term itself, that 'muggles' are somehow lesser. That the random gift of magical ability somehow makes you better. 
 I remember that later on (and hinted at in this book) the idea of mud-bloods (wizards born of muggles) is offered up as a proxy for racism and we're invited to condemn Draco Malfoy for his views (rightly so). But all the time I read this I'm feeling the hypocrisy embodied in the whole idea of muggles, which, albeit voiced without open malice, is really the same damn thing. 
 I will report back on book 2 when we're done. 
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