JK Rowling’s world-famous Harry Potter series comprises eight books, one for each school year which the protagonist, Harry Potter, spends at the wizarding school, with the final year being split across two books. The series immediately became immensely popular after the publication of the first book in the series, The Philosophers Stone. Alongside the books, a successful movie franchise was also created and was praised as a huge commercial success, with each film making massive profits at the box office.
The series follows the life of Harry Potter, from his beginning to learn about his magical ability, through to his ultimate defeat of the wizarding villain, Lord Voldemort. The first book shows Harry’s life being dismal, as he lives in a cupboard under the stairs an
d resides with his aunt and uncle who resent having to look after him following the death of his parents. Harry finds out early in the story that he actually has magical powers, and his parents were wizards. He soon begins attending the only Wizarding School in the United Kingdom, Hogwarts, where he makes friends with Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger, whom he remains friends with through all the books.
Almost every book has Harry, along with his friends, having to solve a challenge to prevent an evil plot by Voldemort to either kill Harry or resurrect himself.
The series gained popularity amongst younger readers almost immediately and was helped along by the fact that the readers would age at approximately the same rate as Harry aged himself, although this pattern stopped with the breaking of the final two books in the series, being released roughly a year apart.