Box Set Review: 'Harry Potter: The Complete Series' Paperback Box Set (Books 1-7)

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(C) 2007 Scholastic, Inc.
Harry Potter: The Complete Series Paperback Box Set (Books 1-7) 

Although I’ve owned two of J.K. Rowling’s bestselling fantasy novels about the adventures of a boy wizard named Harry Potter (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix),  I never really tried to read the entire seven-book cycle after I finished reading the first book.  In both cases, I had been given the Potter books as gifts, and though I finished The Sorcerer’s Stone and gamely gave Order of the Phoenix “the old college try” and got halfway through it, for some reason or another, I did not buy the other five books of the series. 

Now, you might think that I had not enjoyed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone or dismissed Rowling’s works as “mere” kids’ books, but you’d be far off the mark.  I like fantasy books quite a bit and I did like the first book a great deal; Rowling may have intended her books to be read by children but much of her story, characters, themes, writing style, and humor can be enjoyed by adults, too.  It simply was a matter of budget, priorities and having so many other reading (and movie-watching) choices to make that “the boy who lived” and his adventures at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry got lost in the shuffle. 

Ironically, the same thing happened to me with the Harry Potter films: I saw the first two entries of the series during their theatrical runs and received Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone as a Christmas gift back in 2002, but I never got around to watching the other six movies…at least not until I bought – at a greatly reduced price, too – the eight-disc Blu-ray box set in December 2012. 


Knowing full well that movie adaptations have to change things from the original source novels, I decided that if I wanted to understand why J.K. Rowling’s books are so beloved, I would have to read the entire seven-novel saga.  In theory, all I needed to do was to buy the five books I didn’t have, but unfortunately I loaned out my battered copy of the first book and never got it back, so I had to get six books to be able to accomplish my self-imposed challenge. 

I still could have purchased six novels, of course, but when I went to Amazon to order them, I did some math calculations and decided that it would be more economical to purchase the Harry Potter Paperback Box Set (Books 1-7), which was on sale for $54.77 - $32.16 off the regular publisher’s suggested price. 

The Box Set: 
  
The Harry Potter series consists, of course, of seven books, the first of which was published in 1997 and the last in 2007.  Each novel covers one academic year at Hogwarts and follows, in chronological order, the adventures of Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger as they learn the ways of wizards and witches in a world parallel to our (Muggle or non-magic) own and fight the forces of evil led by the Dark Lord known as Voldemort. 

1.      Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
2.      Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
3.      Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
4.      Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
5.      Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
6.      Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
7.      Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 
  
Because Scholastic Books (which is the U.S. publisher of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books) issued the paperbacks in the larger trade paperback format rather than the more compact mass paperback one, the box which contains the seven books is larger than what I’m used to in paperback box sets.  It’s made of rather sturdy cardboard – not wood or plastic – and is illustrated with art by Rowling’s illustrator Mary Grandpere.  (All seven book covers are reproduced on the back panel of the box, while larger details of Grandpere’s illustrations are placed on the top and side panels.) 

While it’s not indestructible – I would not give this set to anyone under the age of nine – the packaging is sturdy and fairly attractive for young readers. Personally, I would have preferred a wood box with less gaudy artwork, but I think that’s because I’m older than the average Harry Potter fan and tend to look at box set art with adult eyes rather than through those of a child or teenager. 

The books, of course, fit rather nicely in the box, but you do need to be careful when you are withdrawing or replacing them.  It’s sometimes hard to remove one of the volumes – especially the latter “tomes” that cover Years Five through Seven – without accidentally bending the covers’ corners and creating “dog ears” on them. 

All in all, this box set is still worth getting, especially when the publisher’s price is reduced by nearly a third. Some grown-up readers might take issue with the packaging material (cardboard) and its graphic design (child-oriented rather than being elegant and subtle), but I don’t have any major problems in that regard.     

Paperback: 4167 pages
Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0545162076
ISBN-13: 978-0545162074
Product Dimensions: 10.6 x 8.5 x 5.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 8 pounds

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