Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (by JK Rowling)

There are a handful of children’s authors whose works I re-read regularly. Most of them are writers I first discovered as a child, or in my early teens. But there are a couple whom I did not discover until my sons were in their early teens; one of them is JK Rowling. We bought her first two ‘Harry Potter’ books shortly after moving to Cyprus, and when I finally decided to read them - before there was any controversy surrounding them - I was very impressed.

We collected all the other books in...