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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

by J. K. Rowling

Summary

Packed with mystery, subterfuge, and a more intimate understanding of the challenges that lie ahead of him, Harry Potter’s sixth year at Hogwarts heaves with his growing sense of responsibility regarding the defeat of Lord Voldemort, a relentlessly sneaking suspicion that classmate Draco Malfoy is a Death Eater in cahoots with the dastardly Professor Snape, and a host of romantic entanglements that hilariously plague everyone. Harry’s busy N.E.W.T.-level schedule includes Potions, where he surprises himself by excelling due to strangely helpful, hand-written margin notes in his book, ascribed only to the enigmatic "Half-Blood Prince." Sporadic, private lessons with Dumbledore center on the personal history of Lord Voldemort, which both unnerves and fascinates Harry. At the same time, the romantic ups and downs of Ron and Hermione threaten to destroy their friendship. The sixth installation in the phenomenally successful Harry Potter series opened with record-breaking sales of an estimated 6.9 million books on July 16, 2005. Named both one of Publishers Weekly's Best Children's Books of 2005 and a New York Times Notable Book of 2005.

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Media Reviews

"If Harry grew up in the last book, here he becomes a man, learning the true impact of the last book's prophecy, and the importance of love as the antidote to fear."

   -- Publishers Weekly Annex

"[T]he achievement of the Potter books is the same as that of the great classics of children's literature, from the Oz novels to THE LORD OF THE RINGS: the creation of a richly imagined and utterly singular world, as detailed, as improbable and as mortal as our own."    -- Michiko Kakutani

   -- New York Times

"Love is much more important to Rowling than magic. The real mystery, for her, is the human heart. She has always been more interested in the hand that wields the wand, the way the enchantment illuminates the wizard who casts it."

   -- Time

"To read Rowling's novels as an adult is to sink into a half-remembered state of childhood rapture, the trance produced when you gobbled up fantasies for the first time. In the series's fourth volume, ''HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE,'' Dumbledore lets Harry stumble across the Pensieve, a collecting dish for excess memories. To extract a memory, a wizard holds a wand to his temple, draws a silvery strand of thought from his head and taps it into the basin. Any wizard who touches the swirling contents of the bowl drops into the visions it contains, reliving them as if he had been present at their inception. Dipping into the fiction that is Rowling's Pensieve, adult readers tumble into an eerie but familiar realm, containing not only Rowling's images of Harry but their own memories of books they loved when they were Harry's age and younger."    -- Liesl Schillinger

   -- New York Times Book Review

"This newest excursion into the Potterverse will leave readers pleased, amused, excited, scared, infatuated, delighted, sad, surprised, thoughtful...."

   -- Kirkus online

"I admit, it's a bit of a shock to realize that Harry Potter is quite nearly an adult...It's heartening, both as an author and a reader, to see that J.K. Rowling is brave enough to experiment with her beloved series, and that she has remained true to the emotional and physical development of her characters."    -- Christopher Paolini

   -- Entertainment Weekly

Bibliographic Details

Publisher: Scholastic
Published date: 2005
Size: 6.25 x 9.25 inches
Weight: 2.2 pounds
Ages: 7 to 9
Pages: 652

Synopses

Sixth-year Hogwarts student Harry Potter gains valuable insights into the boy Voldemort once was, even as his own world is transformed by maturing friendships, schoolwork assistance from an unexpected source, and devastating losses.

Publisher's Notes

In...HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX, the last chapter, titled "The Second War Begins," started:

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