Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

The dragons are only a small part of this very popular book, but it is very memorable. The challenge that Harry (and others) must complete is very creative. The dragons in this story are closer to beasts than sentient creatures, and it forces the character and reader to realize that the dragons must be defeated with intelligence, not brute force. Although this is quite different from many stories, including mine, I can appreciate the difference and the value it brings to the trial Harry is trying to complete.

I have a bad habit of reading books after the adaption is made. I watched the first three Harry Potter films, but I couldn’t wait. After the third movie, I saw the book for Goblet of Fire was already out and I grabbed it within days. For me, Goblet is the first experience I had reading Harry Potter and I loved it!

We have dragons and an awesome competition to move the plot, but we also have budding teenage emotions. Love. Death. Friendship. Fights. The menacing presence of Voldemort. Together everything combines to deliver a coming-of-age staple! Many of these… show more.

Read the introduction to Chapter 4 in Happy Potter and the Goblet of Fire and you will have a perfect description of the brain’s stress response. Spoiler alert – Harry finds himself in a scary maze, with monsters lurking in dark corners at every curve, and he needs to think quickly to get himself out. He starts sweating, his heart beats fast, he feels anxious. A maze is a classic trigger of the brain’s stress response. Mazes have been used for over one hundred years to study the anxiolytic effect of drugs in rats and mice, because mazes trigger the… show more.

Dragons form one of the main and most dangerous trials faced by the young wizard competitors in this installment of the wildly popular series. I’m not a huge fan of modern YA novels, but these ones are well done, and even the movies were terrific.