Read all three and just loved them all. If you want more details about the Harry Potter world then make sure to pick this one up. Rowling goes into a bit of detail and even adds some back stories to secondary characters Professor McGonagall and Professor Lupin. I particularly the last volume since it was all about Hogwarts ??2016 5-star age-children ...more19 s1 comment Chad8,884 978

I feel a bit misled. I thought this was full of short stories about characters from the Potterverse. However, it has more of a historical background nature to it. It's almost an encyclopedia for the Harry Potter books. There's still interesting tidbits in it, directly from J.K. Rowling but I wasn't immersed in it I would be from one of her books.16 s Jessica Cleghorn202 36

I can't emphasize it enough: if you are a fan of the Harry Potter series, READ THIS. I don't know why I'd not heard of it- I only found it searching through books labelled "Harry Potter" in my libraries Overdrive collection. As fans may well know J.K.Rowling thought up a lot more detail and background to Harry's world than is fully explored in the books, and these collections delve into a lot of that information. It was so wonderful being immersed in the world again and learning new things- almost as if one were reading one of the books again for the first time!fantasy-sci-fi favorites kids-books ...more15 s1 comment Tanya528 326

Back in the summer of 2011, I was one of the million Potterheads who successfully completed a scavenger hunt and quiz that allowed us to register to Pottermore and test the beta version before it opened to the general public. Back then, it was still an interactive site, and you could go through the books chapter by chapter, collecting potion ingredients, chocolate frog cards, galleons, and other things along the way, as well as duel and brew potions to gain House Points. As you progressed through the site, exclusive and previously unreleased writing was unlocked. I started a re-read to go along with the previously unpublished material, but I only got halfway through book two before I lost interest as the content updates were few and far between.

When, after a major update, the interactive, fun side of Pottermore ceased to exist, they compiled (some) of the exclusive content into three ebooks, exclusively sold on the site. Pottermore Presents is a collection of short writings and thoughts by J. K. Rowling, originally featured on the site, with some new additions. It's perhaps important to note that while Rowling wrote the original snippets, the writing is curated by the Pottermore team, and these were never full-fledged stories, despite what the titles imply, but rather mini-biographies and character sketches.

Short Stories from Hogwarts of Heroism, Hardship and Dangerous Hobbies starts out with the life of McGonagall before nicely tying in to a short chapter on Animagi. This is the most detailed background info on any of the characters that you're going to get in these ebooks, but a lot of it felt gratuitous to me, since it wasn't hinted at anywhere in the books; the bits about her early career and love life didn't feel organic to the canon, to be perfectly honest. We then move on to Remus Lupin, his family background, how he came to be bitten by Fenrir Greyback, and how he subsequently suffered throughout childhood, and how he coped in later life. This chapter also goes on a tangent on lycanthropy and the available methods to keep the condition in check. Most of this chapter felt rooted in the actual books and didn't come from nowhere, which made it, in my eyes, the most well-rounded. The most interesting things about the (main) character vignettes are Rowling's short thoughts after each, what mythological or historical figures she took inspiration from to make up their names, and the fact that with Lupin, she set out to draw a parallel to the stigma surrounding being HIV positive through his experiences as a werewolf, which is really cool to me. The latter fifth closes out with a short chapter on Trelawney and the practice of "Naming Seers", and one on Silvanus Kettleburn, the Care of Magical Creatures teacher before Hagrid, who was only briefly mentioned in Prisoner of Azkaban.

Short Stories from Hogwarts of Power, Politics and Pesky Poltergeists mostly concerns itself with characters who were seduced by power, and was my least favorite and certainly weakest of the three. We begin with our favorite villain, Dolores Umbridge, and continue on to a short history of every Minister for Magic there's ever been, and the changes Azkaban prison underwent under different leadership. Slughorn's chapter didn't contain much new information, but was instead a summary of the info scattered throughout the books, re-packaged into a timeline. It ties in to a chapter on Potions as a magical subject, and then specifically Polyjuice Potion and freaking cauldrons—this volume was a prime example of what I mean when I said that the coherence of these books divided up by "subject" is flimsy at best.... the collection ends with chapters on Professor Quirrell and, I'm assuming for reasons of title alliteration (?!) Peeves the Poltergeist.

Hogwarts: An Incomplete and Unreliable Guide was probably the most cohesive in the way the tidbits were all tied together, and concerned everything relating to Hogwarts, starting with the journey to get there, the Sorting, the castle and its grounds, a very short chapter on lessons, since most have been covered in the other books, as well as its resident ghosts and portraits, and "secrets", i.e. the Chamber of Secrets and rare magical objects which were housed there, such as the Mirror of Erised, the Pensieve, the Philosopher's Stone, and the Sword of Gryffindor. It also reinforced my strong suspicion that it wasn't Rowling that so royally fucked up Cursed Child, since she quite obviously isn't very fond of Time Turners. Finally, I suppose they wanted to keep the three ebooks somewhat comparable in length, but the bit on Peeves would've fit in this collection much better.

To sum them up... The Cursed Child screenplay was a dumpster fire, while these are, for the most part, if not really interesting, at least inoffensive. They could've easily been collected into one larger volume (which would still be slim at just over 200 pages) instead of forcing them into a pseudo-order with the aid of blurbs by the Pottermore team to try and make them "flow", though, and for that reason I don't think they're worth what's being charged for them, especially since the content was previously available for free. Perhaps I'd feel differently if proceeds were going to charity, as with the Comic Relief editions of Quidditch Through the Ages and Fantastic Beasts, but being ebooks and the dry and shallow vignettes that they are, it's really nothing short of a money grab. I'd only recommend them to the most hardcore of fans as they don't add much of value to the existing canon, and you won't be missing out if you skip them.12 s Leah693 99

A must read for any Potter fan!!! :)

So much extra interesting information on Remus Lupin and Minerva McGonagal.

JK actually wrote more than what was in the Harry Potter books and she also had different drafts of the books which is shared a bit in this book. It's really interesting.

I how they went over the whole time change issue I had with The Prisoner of Azkaban. JK also shares how she came up with characters names and places and objects. It's really insightful to hear her perspective and train of thought while she wrote the series.fav-fantasy fav-ya10 s ??RoryReads??722 170

4 Stars

It's nice to learn more about the adult characters in the series.children-books-classics fantasy short-stories ...more8 s Jessica662 25

It gave me information I knew about the world of Harry Potter and information I did not know. ItÂ’s good if you are wanting to go in the depth about certain things about the series. Only thing is it doesnÂ’t go to deep. It just scratches the surface.fantasy5 s Books are TARDIS165 49

Actual Rating: 4.5 stars and 100 points to Gryffindor.


Find background stories, trivia and interesting thoughts galore in this magnificent collection of shorts. Hey-yo!

I didn't think that this collection would impact me quite so much. I mean I already know, and have processed the books. Right? Boy was I wrong. J.K. had me with McGonagall, Lupin and even Slughorn. I was tearing up for real y'all. Thanks a bunch J.K.


That tidbit about Neville's sorting. OHMERGARD! Have you read a more gosh darned thing. Let me hug you Neville.


I loved the format of this collection. Plenty of feels. Kay, bye.
authors-i-adore boarding-school book-about-books ...more4 s Dal99 45

Voy a repetir lo que vengo diciendo en los comentarios. Superó lo que yo había pensado que iba a ser, es más que un conjunto de textitos: para hacer estos ebooks, no agarraron los relatos que encontraron y los pegaron uno a continuación del otro, sino que se preocuparon por ver cómo organizarlos y enlazarlos para que hubiera un hilo.
Sigo sin estar de acuerdo con que sean tres (por eso yo elegí esta "edición" para poner acá, y los cuento como uno). Podría ser un libro con tres partes tranquilamente.
Lo último: ya comenté que me encantaría verlo impreso en una "enciclopedia ilustrada" y sí, yo lo compraría y sé que muchos de ustedes también, aunque la otra parte del planeta diga que es una pavada y una forma de seguir robando. Pese a todo, debo admitir el diseño que tienen como libros digitales es hermoso: lo primero que dije cuando me enteré de que iban a salir fue que esas portadas merecían ser impresas; y el diseño de los capítulos también es bello bello.

Obviamente, solo recomendado si sos fan fan y te interesa enterarte de detalles del mundo creado por Rowling, ya que no hay una historia o aventura que seguir. 2016 read-in-english5 s Iulia204 99

A great read for any Harry Potter fan, The Hogwarts Collection provides some interesting facts about characters Minerva McGonagall, Remus Lupin and Dolores Umbridge, as well as some of the magical objects mentioned throughout the series.

I personally picked it up as soon as I read 'Minerva McGonagall', as she's one of my favorite characters. The stories are a bit curt, obviously written in more of an article form, but aside from that, I can't fault anything which expands the wondrous Harry Potter universe.
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