British Book Awards

Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 117. Chapters: British Book Award winners, British Book Award winning works, Spike Milligan, J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Terry Pratchett, Salman Rushdie, Philip Pullman, Bill Bryson, Nigella Lawson, David Attenborough, Alan Bennett, Beryl Bainbridge, Bridget Jones's Diary, Anne Fine, Sharon Osbourne, John Mortimer, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Trinny Woodall, Susannah Constantine, The Da Vinci Code, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Jamie Oliver, Susanna Clarke, Northern Lights, Sarah Waters, Catherine Cookson, Delia Smith, The Amber Spyglass, Artemis Fowl, Wilbur Smith, Alexander McCall Smith, Zadie Smith, Jilly Cooper, Raymond Briggs, Peter Mayle, Cloud Atlas, Louis de Bernières, Andrew Morton, Bryce Courtenay, Monica Ali, Wild Swans, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Allison Pearson, My Life, Pete McCarthy, Stupid White Men ...and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!, Maeve Binchy, Hari Kunzru, Kate Atkinson, Chris Stewart, Sebastian Faulks, The Constant Gardener, Labyrinth, The Mousehole Cat, British Children's Book of the Year, British Book of the Year, British Newcomer of the Year, British Illustrated Children's Book of the Year, British Children's Author of the Year. Excerpt: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is the first novel in the Harry Potter series written by J. K. Rowling and featuring Harry Potter, a young wizard. It describes how Harry discovers he is a wizard, makes close friends and a few enemies at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and with the help of his friends thwarts an attempted comeback by the evil wizard Voldemort, who killed Harry's parents when Harry was one year old. The book was published on 30 June 1997 by Bloomsbury in London, while in 1998 Scholastic Corporation published an edition for the United States market under the title Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. The novel won most of the UK book awards that were judged by children, and other awards in the USA. The book reached the top of the New York Times list of best-selling fiction in August 1999, and stayed near the top of that list for much of 1999 and 2000. It has been translated into several other languages and has been made into a feature-length film of the same name. Most reviews were very favourable, commenting on Rowling's imagination, humour, simple, direct style and clever plot construction, although a few complained that the final chapters looked rushed. The writing has been compared to that of Jane Austen, one of Rowling's favourite authors, of Roald Dahl, whose works dominated children's stories before the appearance of Harry Potter, and of the Ancient Greek story-teller Homer. While some commentators thought the book looked backwards to Victorian and Edwardian boarding school stories, others thought it placed the genre firmly in the modern world by featuring contemporary ethical and social issues. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, along with the rest of the Harry Potter series, has been attacked by several religious groups and banned in some countries because of accusations that the novels promote witchcraft. However, some Christian commentators have written that the book exemplifies important Christian viewpoint