Mackenzie

 **HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE**

** //Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince// ** ** //Author: J. K. Rowling// **
 * **About the Book**
 * //Publication: 2005// **

The story centers on main character Harry Potter's sixth year at his wizardry school called Hogwarts. His enemy, Lord Voldemort, is wreaking havoc on the wizard world and the non-magical world as well. Along with this, Draco Malfoy, a Slytherin boy who Harry has never gotten along with, is acting suspiciously, which leads Harry to believe Draco is doing work for Voldemort. The headmaster of Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore, decides to give Harry private lessons in order to teach him about Voldemort and how to defeat him. ||= || **Characters and Conflict**
 * = [[image:harry-and-dumbledore.jpg width="243" height="169"]] ||= Harry and his fellow students return for another year at Hogwarts, but many changes are occurring. Snape, the former Potions teacher who has always abhorred Harry, has now taken the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. In his new Potions class, Harry receives a Potions textbook that once belonged to the "Half-Blood Prince," who is not identified until the end of the novel, but seems to be someone who excels at Potions. Meanwhile, Draco Malfoy is acting suspiciously and seems to be working on something that Harry believes the Dark Lord has instructed him to do. Unknown to Harry, Snape has made an Unbreakable Vow with Malfoy's mother that he will protect Draco as he tries to fulfill Voldemort's wishes. Dumbledore and Harry are, also at this time, uncovering secrets that will help them to defeat Lord Voldemort once and for all. ||
 * ====** About the Author **====


 * J.K., or Joanne Kathleen, Rowling was born in Chipping Sodbury, England in 1965. [[image:untitled.png width="275" height="375" align="right"]]
 * ====She studied French at the University of Essex and took a variety of jobs in London. ====
 * Her desire to be a writer began at a very young age, and she got the idea for her famous //Harry Potter// books in 1990 on a train ride.
 * In 1991, she moved to Portugal where she met her first husband, and they had a child named of fd. However, the couple split in 1994, and Rowling dealt with raising her daughter and still working on her book.
 * Rowling faced great difficulty getting her book published, but eventually, a small company called Bloomsbury agreed to publish the book.
 * ====Rowling currently lives in Scotland with her second husband, Neil Murray, and her three children. ====

**Her Novels**

 * ====So far, the //Harry Potter// books are her only works, but Rowling plans to continue creating new stories. Her books have become one of the most recognizable series in the world, due in part to the very popular movies based off of the books. ====

**Critical Reputation**

 * ====Critics have called Rowling's books "delightful" and say that they appeal to people of all ages. However, some people have tried to ban some of the earlier books because they believed the witchcraft in the books to be "evil." ==== ||
 * ==Theme ==


 * In //Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,// J.K Rowling conveys that sacrificing one's own sense of peace and happiness is often essential in ensuring the safety of others. || == Review ==
 * ======<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Rowling's sixth novel, //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, // does not disappoint. Harry is back for another year of danger at Hogwarts, where he is learning how to defeat Lord Voldemort with the help of the brilliant Albus Dumbledore. The magic of the story and of the characters is captivating and suspenseful. Rowling has a beautiful way of making every plot point fit together perfectly, and she keeps readers interested through her characterization and unique story line. Her use of extreme detail makes the reader feel as if they are casting spells right alongside Harry and his friends. Overall, Rowling has created a dark toned, yet beautiful, novel with an ending no one would expect. ====== ||

<span style="color: #800080; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 140%;">Style Analysis
 * <span style="color: #800080; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 27px;">Rowling uses an immense amount of character development with each and every character, making them easy to relate to and understand. Harry is one character who Rowling develops more throughout each novel, so by this book, the reader has a fairly thorough understanding of who Harry is. He has grown to be a leader through being the captain of the Quidditch team and being the "Chosen One."
 * <span style="color: #800080; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 27px;">"Harry still has his wry sense of humor and a plucky boyish heart, but as in the last volume, he is more Henry V than Prince Hal, more King Arthur than young Wart. He has emerged, at school and on the Quidditch field, as an unquestioned leader: someone who must learn to make unpopular decisions and control his impetuous temper, someone who must keep certain secrets from his schoolmates and teachers" (Kakutani 3).
 * <span style="color: #800080; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 27px;">"He felt slightly nervous at confronting the first hurdle of his Captaincy. 'I dunno why the team's this popular all of a sudden.' 'Oh, come on, Harry,' said Hermione, suddenly impatient. 'It's not //Quidditch// that's popular, it's you! You've never been more interesting, and frankly, you've never been more fanciable" (Rowling 219).
 * <span style="color: #800080; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 27px; text-align: left;">Another example of Harry developing as a character and as a person comes with his realization that he has no one to protect him and is on his own in his fight against evil.
 * <span style="color: #800080; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 27px; text-align: left;">"Harry himself, grown more independent, decisive, and 'fanciable,' comes of age, committing himself by his own choice to defeating Voldemort and accepting that former protectors like his parents and Dumbledore (and even the Dursleys) no longer stand between him and danger" (Burkam 1)
 * <span style="color: #800080; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 27px;">"And Harry saw very clearly as he sat there under the hot sun how people who cared about him had stood in front of him one by one, his mother, his father, his godfather, and finally Dumbledore, all determined to protect him; but now that was over. He could not let anybody else stand between him and Voldemort; he must abandon forever the illusion he ought to have lost at the age of one, that the shelter of a parent's arms meant that nothing could hurt him" (Rowling 645).
 * <span style="color: #800080; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 27px;">"And Harry saw very clearly as he sat there under the hot sun how people who cared about him had stood in front of him one by one, his mother, his father, his godfather, and finally Dumbledore, all determined to protect him; but now that was over. He could not let anybody else stand between him and Voldemort; he must abandon forever the illusion he ought to have lost at the age of one, that the shelter of a parent's arms meant that nothing could hurt him" (Rowling 645).


 * <span style="color: #000080; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Another stylistic element Rowling uses in the novel is unique time sequencing/chronology. The book is a combination of events in Harry's present life and flashbacks seen in Dumbledore's Pensieve. Readers learn about Voldemort's past and are simultaneously seeing Harry's future unfold as he learns of the mission he must embark on.
 * <span style="color: #000080; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">"As in earlier volumes, Ms. Rowling moves Harry's story forward by chronicling his adventures at Hogwarts, which simultaneously moving backward in time through the use of flashbacks (via Dumbledore's remarkable Pensieve, a receptacle for people's memories). As a result, this is a coming-of-age story that chronicles the hero's evolution not only by showing his maturation through a series of grueling tests, but also by detailing the growing emotional wisdom he gains from understanding more and more about the past" (Kakutani 3).
 * <span style="color: #000080; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">"Harry stepped up to the stone basin and bowed obediently until his face sank through the surface of the memory; he felt the familiar sensation of falling through nothingness and then landed upon a dirty stone floor in almost total darkness....Dumbledore's fingers closed tightly around Harry's arm and they were soaring back into the present again. The soft golden light in Dumbledore's office seemed to dazzle Harry's eyes after that impenetrable darkness" (Rowling 365-66).

<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">//Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince// Movie Trailer media type="youtube" key="JYLdTuL9Wjw" height="315" width="560" align="center"

Works Cited Burkam, Anita L. "J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." //The Horn Book Magazine// (2005). 587+. //Literature Resource Center.// Web. 13 Dec. 2011. <http://go.galegroup.com>

Kakutani, Michiko. "Harry Potter Works His Magic Again in a Far Darker Tale." //New York Times// (16 July 2005): 7. Rpt. in //Children's Literature Review.// Ed. Tom Burns. Vol. 112. Detroit: Gale, 2006. //Literature Resource Center.// Web. 13 Dec. 2011. <go.galegroup.com>

Rowling, J.K. //Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.// Scholastic: New York, 2005. Print.