Please can you help me with a short speech? (one minute)?

Question

It is about Harry Potter 4 (the goblet of fire. the BOOK. But it can onnly be 60-70 seconds. I will need to do a sort of speech commercial which will persuade people to read the book. I begin with my purpose, I need to share my title author and genre somewhere. i need to hold their attention- presenting to my class of middle schoolers and i need a visual aid. im probably going to just draw a pic for the overhead. can someone do it for me or write one and i will put in my own words? pleeease heeeellllllllp!!!!! thank you.

people! do you know what ONE MINUTE means?

Answer 1

Harry spends his remaining summer holiday with the Weasley family and Hermione Granger before attending the Quidditch World Cup. One night, Harry has a nightmare that Lord Voldemort and Peter "Wormtail" Pettigrew are discussing how Voldemort's "faithful servant" can somehow get to him. Voldemort is informed by his snake, Nagini, that Frank Bryce, the Muggle caretaker of the Riddle House is standing outside. Voldemort kills Bryce with the Avada Kedavra curse, causing Harry to awaken with his scar throbbing in pain.

Harry, Hermione, the Weasleys, Amos Diggory and his son, Cedric, set off for the Quidditch World Cup. At the top of a hill is a Portkey that transports the group to the event. The Weasleys stay in tents that appear small and ordinary from the outside, but upon entering, magically open into large comfortable abodes. At the stadium, they encounter Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge and the Malfoy family. That evening there is a loud commotion. Arthur Weasley investigates and orders everyone to leave immediately; Death Eaters are attacking Muggle bystanders. Harry, Ron, and Hermione hide in the woods. The Dark Mark suddenly appears in the night sky, causing more terror and panic. Harry discovers his wand is missing. When it is found, it is implicated in conjuring the Dark Mark, although Harry is deemed innocent. The house elf Winky, found with the wand, is considered guilty.

At Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore introduces retired Auror "Mad-Eye" Moody as the new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. He also announces that the wizarding world's Triwizard Tournament will be held at the school. One student from each of the three competing schools (Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, and Durmstrang) will be selected as champions, after placing their names into the legendary Goblet of Fire. As stated by Barty Crouch of the Ministry of Magic, students under age 17 are ineligible to compete. The Goblet selects Cedric Diggory, Fleur Delacour, and Viktor Krum, as the respective champions. Mysteriously, the Goblet chooses Harry Potter as the fourth champion. He is magically bound to compete, even though he realises he has deliberately been put in grave danger. Although Harry did not enter his own name, most students believe that he did (and that he cheated to do so), including Ron Weasley, who apparently is resentful that Harry has yet again secured himself more fame.

Hagrid reveals to Harry and Madame Maxime, Headmistress of Beauxbatons Academy, that the first event involves battling a dragon to retrieve a golden egg. Igor Karkaroff, the Headmaster of the Durmstrang Institute, also knew, so Harry informed the only unaware contestant, Cedric. Harry jointly wins the first task with Viktor Krum. After seeing how dangerous the first challenge was, Ron realizes Harry did not cheat to enter the Tournement, and they reconcile.

At Christmas, students attend the Yule Ball. As a Triwizard champion, Harry is required to have a partner for the opening dance. He invites a Ravenclaw student, Cho Chang, but she has already committed to go with Cedric Diggory. He then asks his classmate, Parvati Patil. Ron goes with Parvati's twin, Padma. At the dance, both boys, along with the rest of the school, are stunned to see a beautiful Hermione on Viktor Krum's arm, causing Ron to become jealous. Fleur's partner is Ravenclaw Quidditch Captain, Roger Davies.

The Golden Egg contained a riddle revealing the second task, but Harry couldn't solve it until Cedric Diggory gave him a clue. In the task, each champion must rescue a friend who has been hidden underwater in the Black Lake by the merpeople. Harry must rescue Ron, Krum must rescue Hermione, and Cedric is to save Cho Chang. When Fleur Delacour is unable to reach her younger sister, Harry also rescues her, earning Fleur's respect, but causing him to finish second. He is now tied for first place with Cedric Diggory.

The final event is a grueling maze, within which the Triwizard Cup is hidden. Whoever retrieves the trophy first is the victor. Harry and Cedric reach the Triwizard Cup together, but agree to grab the cup simultaneously since they helped one another. However, the cup is actually a portkey that transports them to a graveyard where Wormtail and Voldemort await. On Voldemort's command, Pettigrew kills Cedric and then goes through a series of steps to restore Voldemort's body. Voldemort summons the Death Eaters before engaging Harry in a duel. Unknown to Voldemort, however, their wands are "brothers" since each core contains a tail feather from the same phoenix, Fawkes. The wands don't work properly against each another due to the Priori Incantatem effect — the spells cast by Harry and Voldemort nullify and combine and "echoes" of Voldemort's victims spill out, including Cedric and James and Lily Potter. The images momentarily shield Harry as he breaks the connection between the wands and escapes via the portkey with Cedric's body.

After Voldemort's plan fails, Moody attempts to kill Harry. However, Harry is saved by Dumbledore, Snape and McGonagall. Moody is Stunned, and exposed as a fraud: he is in fact young Barty Crouch, who imprisoned the real Alastor Moody in a magical trunk and used Polyjuice Potion to impersonate him. Moody was kept alive because his hair was needed as an ingredient for the Polyjuice Potion. It was Crouch who entered Harry’s name in the Goblet of Fire and ensured that he reached the Triwizard Cup. Snape administers Veritaserum to force Crouch's confession, but before it can be repeated to the authorities, Cornelius Fudge, refusing to believe Voldemort has returned, orders a dementor to suck out his soul.

----------


In this book, Harry's world expands both physically and figuratively. He goes to places he has never been before (the moor where the World Cup is held, the graveyard). In Goblet of Fire, Harry once again displays his characteristic bravery. From his battle with the Hungarian Horntail dragon, to his bold undertakings in the frigid waters of the second task, and to his extraordinary duel with Lord Voldemort in the graveyard, these acts prove the main character’s courage. Harry also meets a vast number of people of various nationalities and all types. He learns some profound lessons about good and evil, and the difficulty in distinguishing between the two. This is particularly exemplified in the fake Moody, but other characters like Bagman, Crouch and Karkaroff are all examples of various degrees of evil, or evil and good mixed in strange and unpredictable ways.

In many ways, this book can be seen as the turning point of Harry's transition into adulthood (which is in fact the topic of the whole series). Harry has certainly left childhood behind – for example, he "discovers" girls in this book. But he also encounters far more unpleasant aspects of adulthood, from unwanted and malicious publicity to the death of a schoolmate.

The magical world takes on an international aspect in this book, with the introduction of the World Cup and the Triwizard Tournament, including the two other large European schools of Magic, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. The crisis caused by Voldemort's return in the end also, in a way, helps to bring the world together.

Answer 2

Good Luck, but here is an on-line review you can work with:

Harry's Real Magic

Reviewed by Linda L. Richards



There's something magical about Harry. This magic has very little to do with the fictional magic that Scottish author J.K. Rowling has woven into her four books to date. For the last couple of decades or so, parents have been scratching their heads in concern and sometimes real fear while their offspring gave hour upon hour first to television, then video and computer games and, more recently, the Internet. Hours that added up to weeks and, over time, to years of slack-jawed passive entertainment while technological marvels shoveled up activities that required little creative input from the growing young mind in question.

Then out of the blue and from across the pond came an unlikely answer. A young, orphaned wizard devoid of any high tech gimmicks. One got the feeling, after the first wave of international Harry Mania hit in the middle part of 1999, that it wouldn't have mattered if Harry was a dog or a frog or an eggplant, the epic that Rowling was weaving with her series had somehow captured the imaginations of millions of readers of all ages. Somehow, with nothing more technological than a tightly told tale and a lot of typing, J.K. Rowling had -- seemingly with very little effort -- managed to do what a cotillion of concerned coalitions collectively couldn't: she'd gotten the children of the world reading. And reading passionately and with abandon. As everyone who loves good fiction knows, reading breeds still more reading. One good book behind us sets us on the trail of still more. Even if you have to read a half dozen or more books to find another special one, the trail is seldom unsatisfying. But it takes that one book to send us on the course.

The release of the fourth book in the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, has illustrated how straight a course it is. When, predictably, bookstores everywhere quickly ran out of the earliest shipments of the first edition, the children still flooded into the stores dragging along credit card-holding parents. And what did they do when they didn't find Harry? They began their trail. They bought other books. As printing presses began whirling out the second edition, children were already settling onto sofas and cuddling into their beds or perhaps finding a shady tree with copies of other books in their sweaty little hands. Harry's magic, you see, is not exclusive. It invites comparison, competition and expansion. It invites children to take a break from passive entertainments and experiment with the first -- the original -- virtual reality: The stories we build with the aid of a fabulous writer. The colors, the scents, the experience of fiction.

While Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire might invite comparison, there's not really a great deal that makes this cut. First of all, it's a massive book. More than twice the reading commitment of the previous books in the series. While something like this might be barely remarkable in a book by, say, John Grisham or Tom Robbins, the latest Rowling -- like the others before it -- is a children's book, aimed at -- if not exclusively enjoyed by -- humans under the age of 12 or 13 years.

A book of this size seems like it could be a daunting challenge for the preadolescent reader who might not ever have had reason to pick up a book this thick in their lives before. And pity the poor youngsters lugging it about in their messenger bags and backpacks. Yet, this too is part of the magic. Once an epic has been consumed with gusto, it paves the way for other epics. I've known adults who have declined to read especially thick books because, "I could never finish anything that long." The Potter generation won't share those qualms: they'll have done it.

It was optimistic for the writer, as well. The reviewed edition (Raincoast Books) weighs in at 640 pages. The Potter neophyte might well ask how a writer could sustain a book about magic and underage wizards over such a long haul. Somehow -- and with no discernible trouble -- Rowling pulls it off. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is all of the things the three earlier books ever were. And more. Goblet of Fire is an entirely tight story that fairly crackles with the excitement, warmth and humor that has rapidly become Rowling's signature. But -- as the very weight of the book would suggest -- there is more here, as well.

In Goblet of Fire, Harry is 14 and seems almost ready to take on the world as indicated by his pre-destiny. Prior to publication, Rowling had warned that book four would have a darker nature than the previous three, but I'm not sure this is an accurate description. Strictly speaking, all of the Potter books have had elements that are darker than your average children's book. I think this is partly why these books have been so extremely popular. This isn't the whitewashed reality that has become so prevalent in children's fiction; even in realistic fiction. Harry's brushes with death are very real and this -- magic aside -- makes his heroics all the more believable. Also, Harry spent a good part of book one locked in a closet by his nearest living relatives and by book three, Harry was nearly snuffed through the apparent machinations of devotees of Lord Voldemort ("You-Know-Who") only to be saved just in the nick of time by his long-incarcerated godfather (the title character in The Prisoner of Azkaban) and his own ingenuity.

Of course, dastardly and determined characters like Voldemort are not easily put out of their misery and the unspeakable noble provides some of the action and tension in Goblet of Fire. Since Harry is the only person -- wizard or muggle, alike -- who has been able to survive Voldemort's spells, it only stands to reason that he'll stop at very little to get Harry out of the way. Whatever it takes. As the story progresses, Rowling introduces some engaging new characters, some world class Quidditch and a lot of the resonances at which Rowling is becoming so adept.

Some of the darker feeling comes from the fact that Goblet of Fire is simply a much longer book than the previous three and thus there is room for more intricacies of plot with ever more delicious twists and turns. The conclusion leaves readers at the edge of their seat and anxious for more. More is coming, though at the moment, the wait seems very long. At its inception, there were seven books planned for the Harry Potter series. Just over halfway there and it feels like Rowling is just warming up. | July 2000