Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter Series #4)

by J. K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré (Illustrator)

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is the fourth book in the series. Harry returns to Hogwarts with nightmares about Voldemort looming in his head. This year, there is an exciting event at Hogwarts, but will it be more dangerous than fun? Between the weird dreams Harry's been having, his scar hurting, and rumors of the Dark Lord's return, Harry's godfather Sirius Black grows increasingly concerned as he tries to ensure Harry's safety. Will Harry's nightmares come true? Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is an exciting story you won't want to put down with surprises you wouldn't expect.

The paperback edition of the legendary, record-breaking, best-selling fourth Harry Potter novel.

Harry Potter is midway through his training as a wizard and his coming of age. Harry wants to get away from the pernicious Dursleys and go to the International Quidditch Cup. He wants to find out about the mysterious event that's supposed to take place at Hogwarts this year, an event involving two other rival schools of magic, and a competition that hasn't happened for a hundred years. He wants to be a normal, fourteen-year-old wizard. But unfortunately for Harry Potter, he's not normal - even by wizarding standards. And in his case, different can be deadly.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780439139601
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	09/01/2002
Series:	Harry Potter
Edition description:	REPRINT
Pages:	752
Sales rank:	3,159
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.50(h) x 1.90(d)
Lexile:	880L (what's this?)
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

About the Author

Mary GrandPré has illustrated more than twenty beautiful books, including The Noisy Paint Box by Barb Rosenstock, which received a Caldecott Honor; Cleonardo, the Little Inventor, of which she is also the author; and the original American editions of all seven Harry Potter novels. Her work has also appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, and the Wall Street Journal, and her paintings and pastels have been shown in galleries across the United States. Ms. GrandPré lives in Sarasota, Florida, with her family.

J.K. Rowling is the author of the seven Harry Potter books, which have sold over 500 million copies, been translated into over 80 languages, and made into eight blockbuster films. She also wrote three short series companion volumes for charity, including Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which later became the inspiration for a new series of films. Harry’s story as a grown-up was later continued in a stage play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which J.K. Rowling wrote with playwright Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany.

In 2020, she returned to publishing for younger children with the fairy tale The Ickabog, which she initially published for free online for children in lockdown, later donating all her book royalties to help vulnerable groups affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.

J.K. Rowling has received many awards and honors for her writing, including for her detective series written under the name Robert Galbraith. She supports a wide number of humanitarian causes through her charitable trust Volant, and is the founder of the children’s care reform charity Lumos.

For as long as she can remember, J.K. Rowling wanted to be a writer, and is at her happiest in a room, making things up. She lives in Scotland with her family.

Hometown:

Perthshire, Scotland

Date of Birth:

July 31, 1965

Place of Birth:

Chipping Sodbury near Bristol, England

Education:

Exeter University

Website:

http://www.jkrowling.com

Read an Excerpt

1. The Riddle House

The villagers of Little Hangleton still called it "the Riddle House," even though it had been many years since the Riddle family had lived there. It stood on a hill overlooking the village, some of its windows boarded, tiles missing from its roof, and ivy spreading unchecked over its face. Once a fine-looking manor, and easily the largest and grandest building for miles around, the Riddle House was now damp, derelict, and unoccupied.

The Little Hangletons all agreed that the old house was "creepy." Half a century ago, something strange and horrible had happened there, something that the older inhabitants of the village still liked to discuss when topics for gossip were scarce. The story had been picked over so many times, and had been embroidered in so many places, that nobody was quite sure what the truth was anymore. Every version of the tale, however, started in the same place: Fifty years before, at daybreak on a fine summer's morning, when theRiddle House had still been well kept and impressive, a maid had entered the drawing room to find all three Riddles dead.

The maid had run screaming down the hill into the village and roused as many people as she could.

"Lying there with their eyes wide open! Cold as ice! Still in their dinner things!"

The police were summoned, and the whole of Little Hangleton had seethed with shocked curiosity and ill-disguised excitement. Nobody wasted their breath pretending to feel very sad about the Riddles, for they had been most unpopular. Elderly Mr. and Mrs. Riddle had been rich, snobbish, and rude, and their grown-up son, Tom, had been, if anything, worse. All the villagers cared about was the identity oftheir murderer for plainly, three apparently healthy people did not all drop dead of natural causes on the same night.

The Hanged Man, the village pub, did a roaring trade that night; the whole village seemed to have turned out to discuss the murders. They were rewarded for leaving their firesides when the Riddles' cook arrived dramatically in their midst and announced to the suddenly silent pub that a man called Frank Bryce had just been arrested.

"Frank!" cried several people. "Never!"

Frank Bryce was the Riddles' gardener. He lived alone in a rundown cottage on the grounds of the Riddle House. Frank had come back from the war with a very stiff leg and a great dislike of crowds and loud noises, and had been working for the Riddles ever since.

There was a rush to buy the cook drinks and hear more details.

"Always thought he was odd," she told the eagerly listening villagers, after her fourth sherry. "Unfriendly, like. I'm sure if I've offered him a cuppa once, I've offered it a hundred times. Never wanted to mix, he didn't."

"Ah, now," said a woman at the bar, "he had a hard war, Frank. He likes the quiet life. That's no reason to -"

"Who else had a key to the back door, then?" barked the cook. "There's been a spare key hanging in the gardener's cottage far back as I can remember! Nobody forced the door last night! No broken windows! All Frank had to do was creep up to the big house while we was all sleeping . . . ."

The villagers exchanged dark looks.

"I always thought he had a nasty look about him, right enough," grunted a man at the bar.

"War turned him funny, if you ask me," said the landlord.

"Told you I wouldn't like to get on the wrong side of Frank, didn't I, Dot?" said an excited woman in the corner.

"Horrible temper," said Dot, nodding fervently. "I remember, when he was a kid. . ."

By the following morning, hardly anyone in Little Hangleton doubted that Frank Bryce had killed the Riddles.

But over in the neighboring town of Great Hangleton, in the dark and dingy police station, Frank was stubbornly repeating, again and again, that he was innocent, and that the only person he had seen near the house on the day of the Riddles' deaths had been a teenage boy, a stranger, dark-haired and pale. Nobody else in the village had seen any such boy, and the police were quite sure that Frank had invented him.

Then, just when things were looking very serious for Frank, the report on the Riddles' bodies came back and changed everything.

The police had never read an odder report. A team of doctors had examined the bodies and had concluded that none of the Riddles had been poisoned, stabbed, shot, strangled, suffocated, or (as far as they could tell) harmed at all. In fact (the report continued, in a tone of unmistakable bewilderment), the Riddles all appeared to be in perfect health - apart from the fact that they were all dead. The doctors did note (as though determined to find something wrong with the bodies) that each of the Riddles had a look of terror upon his or her face - but as the frustrated police said, whoever heard of three people being frightened to death?

As there was no proof that the Riddles had been murdered at all, the police were forced to let Frank go. The Riddles were buried in the Little Hangleton churchyard, and their graves remained objects of curiosity for a while. To everyone's surprise, and amid a cloud of suspicion, Frank Bryce returned to his cottage on the grounds of the Riddle House.

"'S far as I'm concerned, he killed them, and I don't care what the police say," said Dot in the Hanged Man. "And if he had any decency, he'd leave here, knowing as how we knows he did it."

But Frank did not leave. He stayed to tend the garden for the next family who lived in the Riddle House, and then the next for neither family stayed long. Perhaps it was partly because of Frank that the new owners said there was a nasty feeling about the place, which, in the absence of inhabitants, started to fall into disrepair...

Editorial Reviews

"I'm relieved to report that Potter 4 is every bit as good as Potters 1 through 3 . . . The fantasy writer'' job is to conduct the willing reader from mundanity to magic. This is a feat of which only a superior imagination in capable, and Rowling posses such equipment." – Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review"J.K. Rowling proves once again that she is a riveting storyteller . . . the kind of reading experience that has you charging headlong through the book, oblivious to the outside world." – The Philadelphia Inquirer "As the midpoint in a projected seven-book series, Goblet of Fire is exactly the big, clever, vibrant, tremendously assured installment that gives shape and direction to the whole undertaking and still somehow preserves the material's enchanting innocence . . . This time Rowling offers her clearest proof yet of what should have been wonderfully obvious: What makes the Potter books so popular is the radically simple fact that they're so good." – Janet Maslin, The New York Times "An engaging novel that is compelling, accessible, and impressively even in quality . . . Rowling has the rare ability to take children's fantasy worlds and their workaday worlds with equal seriousness, and she speak to both in Goblet of Fire." – The Boston Sunday Globe\\ "The fourth Harry Potter adventure, centering on an inter-school competition, boasts details that are as ingenious and original as ever. Surely catching readers off-guard must get more difficult with each successive volume, but somewhow Rowling plants the red herrings, the artful clues and tricky surprises that disarm the most attentive audience. A spectacular climax will leave readers breathless." – Publishers Weekly, Best Books of 2000\\ "Harry's fourth challenging experience will more than live up to his myriad fans' expectations . . . the carefully created world of magic becomes more embellished and layered, while the amazing plotting ties up loose ends, even as it sets in motion more entanglements . . . Let the anticipation begin." – Booklist, starred review "Another grand tale of magic and mystery, of wheels within wheels oiled in equal measure by terror and comedy, featuring an engaging young hero-in-training who's not above the occasional snit, and clicking along so smoothly that it seems shorter than it is." — Kirkus Reviews"J.K. Rowling delivers the goods . . . This book (all 734 pages of it) is a rich, rewarding novel – funny and sad, exciting and heroic." – The Seattle Times"J.K. Rowling has done it again. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is a marvelous book." – The San Antonio Express-News0

From the Publisher