Do you remember the first book that made you believe in something that you knew couldn't be true? Do you remember feeling the backs of closets, hoping that maybe, just maybe, you'd find Narnia this time? Do you remember lying awake on dark and stormy nights, just certain that Mrs. Whatsit was lurking outside? Do you remember looking at rabbit holes, wondering what would happen if you fell down them?

Well, get ready to be convinced that there's a platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross station in London: Welcome to the wonderful world of Harry Potter.

Who is Harry Potter? You'd have to live in bubble to have missed this one. He's been on the cover of Time, he's holding three spots on the New York Times bestseller list and he's one of the most-talked about men in the country right now.

Well, who is Harry Potter? Harry Potter is your ordinary 13-year-old, except he's a third-year student at the Hogwart's School of Wizardry. He's the main character in the best-selling books by J.K. Rowling, books which are written for young adult audiences, the 9-to 12-year-old range.

But these aren't easy reads. At 300-plus pages each, they're hefty books. The language doesn't talk down. They're written in the best traditions of children's fantastical literature, like C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" and Madeline L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time." Rowling's books follow the same idea — an absolutely ordinary child is suddenly whisked away into a magical world where adventure abounds.

Harry Potter is an orphan who is forced by his Muggle (non-magical) uncle and aunt, Vernon and Petunia Dursley, to sleep in a cupboard under the staircase. Little does Harry know that his parents were not actually killed in a car accident and that the lightening-bolt shaped scar on his forehead was not from that same accident — in actuality, Harry's wizard parents were killed by Lord Voldemort, an evil wizard so powerful he's called "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" because wizards fear to speak his name. After killing Harry's parents, Voldemort turned on Harry but was unable to kill him. The distinctive scar is a result of that confrontation, where somehow baby Harry broke Voldemort's power, sending him into hiding.

Harry wakes up on his 11th birthday to find a delivery from a magical owl. Before he knows it, Harry is whisked off to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where he is something of a celebrity pupil, having defeated Lord Voldemort while just a baby. The only way to get to Hogwarts is to board a train at the invisible platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross station in London. At Hogwarts, Harry enters a whole new world where he needs a wand for class and takes classes such as "Potions" with the odious Professor Snape and "Defense Against the Dark Arts," where no professor lasts more than a year.

Harry is sorted by the Sorting Hat into Gryffindor, a dorm whose resident ghost is Nearly-Headless Nick. Harry learns to play quidditch, a sport which involves seven wizards mounted on flying brooms and four balls of varying sizes. Quidditch is to Hogwarts what football is to Notre Dame, and Harry's talent at the position of seeker earns him a certain amount of respect in Hogwarts.

In the latest installment in the series, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," Harry is about to begin his third year at Hogwarts with his good friends Ron Weasley, the sixth of seven wizard children in a poor family, and Hermione Granger, the brilliant, Muggle-born know-it-all.

This year, Harry, Ron and Hermoine get to start taking elective subjects like Divination, Arithmancy and Muggle Studies, in addition to the ongoing core classes like Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts.

But Harry's year gets off to an inauspicious start. He spends summers at home with the Dursleys, and at the end of the summer, Aunt Marge comes to visit. Harry promises Uncle Vernon that he'll behave (the Dursleys refuse to allow any magic in their house), but when Marge begins to attack Harry's dead parents, Harry loses his temper and casts a swelling spell, then runs away from the Dursleys.

Terrified that he's going to be expelled for breaking the Decree for the Restriction of Underage Wizardry (especially after that flying car incident of the previous year), Harry is rescued from the streets of Little Winging by the Knight Bus, emergency transport for stranded witches and wizards.

When Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic, finally catches up with Harry in Diagon Alley (a magical street in London), he doesn't expel Harry but rather seems glad to see him. As Harry later finds out, Sirius Black, a hardened wizard criminal and minion of Lord Voldemort, had escaped from Azkaban fortress, the wizard prison, and is after Harry. Harry is hurried off to Hogwarts and the watchful eye of the headmaster, Professor Albus Dumbledore. Black is so dangerous that Hogwarts is being guarded by dementors, the legendary guardians of Azkaban, who are a danger not only to Black but to the students at Hogwarts as well.

As the story goes on and becomes more complex, Harry discovers that it was Sirius Black, his father's best friend, who betrayed his parents to Voldemort. Meanwhile, Gryffindor is desperate to win the quidditch cup from Slytherin (another dorm), Harry is secretly learning to cast a patronus to protect himself from the dementors, and Hagrid, the kindly groundskeeper who befriended Harry, is trying to save a hippogriff from death. Also, Ron's pet rat, Scabbers, is looking less and less healthy, a fact which Ron blames on Hermoine and her new cat.

Harry, Ron and Hermoine decide to take on Sirius Black themselves, when suddenly everything they thought they knew is ripped out from under their feet, and it's up to Harry and Hermoine (Ron having been knocked out cold) to save two innocent lives.

Sound complicated? It is. But it's also engrossing.

Rowling's own story is passing into legend. She was divorced, unemployed and living on public assistance in Edinburgh with her infant daughter when she began writing "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" — the first book in the series — in a café during her daughter's naps. She received a grant from the Scottish Arts Council to finish the book, then sold it to Bloomsbury in the U.K. and Scholastic Books in the U.S. "Sorcerer's stone" has since won a few awards and the book rights have been sold in 11 countries.

The books themselves fly off the shelves. "Azkaban" was released at 3:45 p.m. in the U.K. because of fears that students would skip school to get the book. In less than two weeks after its July 8 release in Britain, "Azkaban" went through 10 printings and sold 270,000 copies.

In the U.S., many fans went to amazon.co.uk and paid the overseas shipping rate to get the book before its U.S. release date of Sept. 8. The next book will be released in Britain and the U.S. simultaneously, in part because Scholastic lost sales to Bloomsbury when U.S. customers resorted to the Internet to buy the book early.

If you haven't read a Harry Potter book yet, you're not just missing out on a great read but a cultural phenomenon. This reviewer must confess that she ripped the first two out of her 10-year-old brother's hands and read them both in one sitting, and that she went out and bought the third one on its release date, then stayed up far too late reading it and was tired and cranky in class the next day. She must also confess that she almost cried at the ending of the third one because it was so nice for Harry.

And if you're still not a convert, listen to Michael, the aforementioned 10-year-old brother of this reviewer: "Harry Potter is awesome."

Five out of five shamrocks

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