Today marks the birthday of our favorite literary hero and his creator; Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling! Happy Birthday to two of the most important people of my childhood, and I’m sure many of yours as well. Jo is celebrating her 47th birthday while Harry turns the ripe age of 32.
Harry has led a pretty normal life since his defeat of the Dark Lord in 1998. He married Ginny Weasley and had 3 children: Albus Severus, James Sirius and Lily Luna. He currently works as an Auror for the Ministry of Magic.
J.K. Rowling, on the other hand, has had many changes in her life since she wrote the first Potter book. She has become a household name and an author loved by millions of children. Jo has a wonderful husband and three children of her own. She also has a new book, The Casual Vacancy, releasing in September.
Today it has been announced that Scholastic will be opening a new “Harry Potter Reading Club” for young readers! More exciting is the fact that J.K. Rowling will participate in a global webcast (for educators who sign up) to launch the club on October 11th!
At 12:00 noon ET (9:00am PT / 5:00pm GMT) on Thursday, October 11, J.K. Rowling will participate in a live virtual author visit to classrooms across America to discuss the world of Harry Potter including Pottermore (www.pottermore.com), an exciting, free online experience that offers Harry Potter fans the chance to explore and discover exclusive new writing by J.K. Rowling as well as immerse themselves in other interactive content and community activities.
The October 11 webcast will be broadcast live from J.K. Rowling’s hometown of Edinburgh, Scotland, and is the first time she has had the opportunity to answer questions from kids live since 2007. Educators can sign up to join the webcast beginning today at www.scholastic.com/hpreadingclub.
The new Harry Potter Reading Club website provides educators, librarians, after school program coordinators and parents who want to organize a book club with access to all the tools they need to host a Harry Potter Reading Club and celebrate the joy of reading. The first 10,000 registrants for the Club will receive a welcome kit including bookmarks, stickers and nametags. Printable versions of these items will also be available for download from the website.
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The Harry Potter Reading Club website includes a comprehensive discussion guide for each of the seven Harry Potter novels. The guides provide questions to help club members start an insightful conversation about the themes and events in the books and, in certain instances, how the books may relate to readers’ own lives and the world today. Each month Scholastic will add new themed activities to complement the Reading Club discussions that will often relate to experiences on the Pottermore website.
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The Harry Potter Reading Club will also feature a live feed at Twitter #hpREADS providing a community for club leaders as well as “Teacher Tips” from educators already running Harry Potter Reading Clubs. The site will also include a series overview, a glossary of terms and a pronunciation guide as well as information about author J.K. Rowling and illustrator Mary GrandPre. Harry Potter Reading Club members can also expect invitations to additional special events and contests.
According to the listing, the book will include, “new material from Deathly Hallows: Part II and an exclusive removable photo album, with never-before-seen images from all eight films.”
This new version will contain 164 pages, whereas the old version was slightly smaller with 160.
For those of you that haven’t logged into your Pottermore accounts today, the Pottermore insider blog has announced that the first chapters of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets are now available for exploration!
There’s plenty to discover and enjoy: read more exclusive writing from J.K. Rowling; view The Burrow for the first time, de-gnome the garden and collect your second-year shopping list, along with more Galleons, for another visit to Diagon Alley.
Please be aware that all Pottermore students will be able to purchase their second year school books from Diagon Alley, as of tomorrow.
The Chamber of Secrets is being launched in three installments; with the next installment following in the coming weeks. We will keep you updated on the Pottermore Insider, as well as the Pottermore Gateway and the house noticeboards.
Today Bloomsbury launched a competition to find the UK and Irelend’s biggest Harry Potter fan. This competition was made to coincide with the 15th anniversary of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. It runs from today, 26th June until Harry and Jo Rowling’s birthday, 31st July 2012. The winner and runners-up will be announced on Saturday 1st September.
To enter, fans must write a letter that contains no more than 50 words stating why they are the ultimate Harry Potter fan and post their letter in the special postbox provided at a participating bookstore or library. Winners will receive:
The winner will receive a family holiday to experience the magic and excitement of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter™ only at Universal Orlando® Resort and a leather-bound, signed, dedicated and numbered 15th Anniversary Edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
Fourteen lucky runners-up will each receive a leather-bound, signed, dedicated and numbered 15th Anniversary Edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone .
More details from the press release are as follows:
We are looking for the most creative, clever and entertaining reasons and, while the word limit it set to a strict 50 words, please do draw, doodle or illustrate your letters if you wish. Entry is only available through participating bookshops and libraries. Over 1,800 venues are taking part, and to find out whether there is one in your area please take a look at the map and list below. The competition is open to all ages.
As part of your entry, please remember to include your name and date of birth, parent or guardian’s name (where relevant), contact address, email address and phone number. This information will not be counted as part of the 50 word limit.
In the world of Harry Potter, the Book of Spells is 200 years old and is written by Miranda Goshawk. This powerful spell book is kept in the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts library. As a student at Hogwarts, chapter by chapter you will be able to read about and practise a variety of spells, picking up valuable experiences and lessons along the way.
Wonderbook is a new peripheral for PlayStation®3. Using the latest augmented reality technology, Wonderbook puts a physical book in your hands and will support a magical new range of games and reading experiences for the whole family to enjoy.
In addition, Andy House of Sony spoke about how they came up with the idea and how excited J.K. Rowling is about the collaboration.
Sony’s London Studio has been innovative in the past with peripherals like the EyeToy camera, what led to the Wonderbook? I think it was a natural progression, initially from EyeToy and then they built up some considerable strength in Augmented Reality – you may remember EyePet and Invizimals, which were really nice kid-friendly franchises that took full advantage of AR technology, and then it was a natural step to say: what if we combined that idea with some form of physical peripheral? And the intuition was that the most natural interface that we all know is a book.
At the same time, we had the partnership with [J.K. Rowling’s] Pottermore [online property], something I was involved with personally. It was a form of serendipity, we built a good relationship with Michael Denny who runs Sony’s UK studios and was looking for ways to extend the partnership and he said they’d got this rather nascent idea around books and reading and the use of AR.
The next step was to bring it to the attention of J.K. Rowling and she became very enthusiastic. She was marvellous in guiding us in a certain direction. Her view was that text is important and and that informed Book of Spells, we wanted to have this really interesting interaction with text itself so you’re getting children to enjoy the reading experience and getting something magical out of that.
You don’t think consumers will be put off by having to buy the book, perhaps a Move controller and Eye camera? The advantage of bringing this to market now is we have fairly mature technology in terms of the Playstation and controllers, we’re pretty confident we’ll be able to construct some competitive and compelling price points around it. The marketing challenge for us is to convey to people that this is a one-off investment you need to make, but once you’ve done that, there’s an opportunity to refresh it with other content at very affordable prices. If we’re able to bring bona fide educational content to them, then people will find that compelling.
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