One of my criteria for a good book is that I must enjoy re-reading it, and I enjoyed reading this one for the third (or perhaps the fourth) time almost as much as I did the first time.

The Harry Potter series came out at a time when there was a dearth of good children's books. For years the children's shelves in book shops had been filled with dreck like the "Goosebumps" series, and so one of the reasons the Harry Potter books seemed so good was simply the contrast with the other reading material available at the time. But twenty years later this one still seems good, and that, to me, indicates that it has stood the test of time, and can be counted as a classic of children's literature.

I recall, from my first reading, that I liked this one best one the whole series, Each book in the series seemed to be longer than the previous one, and the quantity did not seem to correlate with quality, so I don't know how far I'll get with the series in this re-reading, since I recall that it was all downhill from here.