Prisoner of Azkaban
The third book Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban has a bit of a differing twist than the others. Mostly because Voldemort does not make a personal appearance here as he does all the rest of the time. We have a different dangerous enemy to watch out for this time in Sirius Black, the escaped prisoner.
Synopsis
The third book has a bit of a different feel right from the start. Mostly because Harry is actually happy this time. Not that he would want to stay at Private Drive, but at least his life is getting to be tolerable.....until Aunt Marge comes to visit! Harry knows he can't do magic outside of school, and since he got the warning last summer, so do the Dursleys. Things get pretty bad since Harry can't use his bluff to ward off unwanted attention to himself. But he manages alright until Aunt Marge starts in on him. Since she doesn't know about Harry being a wizard, he has to grin and bear it in order to keep peace with Uncle Vernon so he'll sign his school permission slip.
Things get interesting when Harry finally runs away. We are introduced to yet another aspect of the wizarding world that's tucked away in the muggle world. Harry finally makes it to school, and has more misadventures there.
This is really Harry's worst run of deliberate rule-breaking in the series. He sneaks out of school, lies to teachers (mostly Snape though, and should we really count that?), and generally just does as he likes. However, our hero still has his good morals, even if he was a little side-tracked this year. And with Sirius Black after him, a little deviation is understandable if not forgivable.
Harry still keeps his courage and his loyalty to his friends. And they for him. And there is (as always) a big surprise for us at the end!
If you don't wish to run into spoilers, then, I suggest you stop here and go on to a different page.
My ranking and favorites
OK, this one is my fourth favorite even though we meet Lupin in it. Why? It's a bit of a deviation from the "main" Voldemort vs. Harry plotline, so it kind of feels like a sidetrip, even though I thoroughly enjoyed it. It gives us really important information about Harry's past and his parents, and Harry himself. I feel as if this book gave us a lot of Meat for upcoming books.
Some of my favorite parts in here are:
- When Harry blows up Aunt Marge (the old cow anyway)
- When Harry meets Prof. Lupin
- Hagrid's class
- Harry flying on a hippogriff
- Professor Lupin (always)
- When Fred and George (bless them) give Harry the Maurader's map
- The anti-dementor lessons
- Malfoy getting hit with a mudball
- Snape getting told off by the Maurader's Map (HA HA HA HA HA HA)
- Harry Wood, and the Quidditch cup (even better since he beat Malfoy for it)
- Harry in the shrieking shack fighting his urge to kill Black (this shows our hero's good moral fiber, because he had every right to want to kill Black, but he didn't. Again the same and even more when he wouldn't let them kill Pettigrew).
- The trio blasting Snape! (HA)
- Harry finding out he has a Godfather
- Harry saving them all from the dementor
- Snape whining about losing his medal
- Dumbledore's amusement at everyone's bewilderment and frustration (ha ha it's good to see the good guys having the last laugh for a change)
- Lupin's goodbye (I was Hugely dissapointed to see him go, but he's almost like Dumbledore with his tender and thoughtful talks with Harry)
- Ron getting his new owl
Above are the differing illustrations of Harry from the third book covers. I was pretty dissatisfied with all of them. Daniel Radcliffe comes the closest to my idea of what Harry looked like, so I added him in. I included the hippogriff's heads since most of the covers depict Harry riding one.
Mistakes in book 3
We'll start off with the covers and you can see them by visiting another site via the links page.
- Covers
- I think it's awful how little attention some of these artists paid to Rowling's descriptions. Harry is still seen in most of the covers with muggle clothing on. If wizards wore muggle clothing all the time they wouldn't be wearing robes. (And the fiasco at the Quidditch world cup wouldn't have been quite as humerous) Uncle Vernon dislikes these "weirdos" for a reason! Secondly, still, an astounding number of them feature our hero with brown hair, one of them even looks blond! One cover features a tiger on the cover??? and the hippogriff is mysteriously just a giant eagle. This same cover features a mouse instead of a rat, and Trevor? a white toad is there as well. Another cover has a very weird looking tree man on it, which I have no idea what is. Other covers focus on other features of the book and most of them include Buckbeak (in all differing shades, though the book specifies that buckbeak is a grey hippogriff) The little joker dressed cover is still there and the hippogriff has a very strange looking head, sort of more of a water bird like an egret rather than an eagle. One has an intriguing cover tinted blue and yellowish orange (I actually like this cover, though it doesn't depict Harry but just a howling wolf (Lupin) and some kind of building structure)