Scholastic.com launched an essay contest forkids today, promising 10 winners a trip to London to celebrate the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince onboard a midAtlantic flight. Entrants must write an essay explaining “Why I Love Reading Harry Potter,” and must be no older than 18 as of June 16, 2005. Winners will …read more!

Morning all – it seems a group of grammatically-challenged, miscreant, script-kiddie Slytherins has been cruising the fandom overnight littering question marks and strange links across all the Harry Potter sites. We’re doing an audit of our security measures and trying to track down the culprits. Meanwhile, we’ve gotten so many questions about the rogue punctuation, …read more!

Check it out right here!

Page from DanRadcliffe.co.uk forwarded a message from Dan Radcliffe that he sent to both sites (including DanRadcliffe.com) regarding the interview we posted about last week: I usually do not make any comment on postings on websites however, I have been made aware that a simple answer I gave in an interview to Weekly Reader re …read more!

Contests are already underway worldwide to determine who the 70 “cub reporters” who will be at Edinburgh Castle on July 15, and grilling JKR on July 17. The contests, as announced on JKRowling.com, are underway in Britain, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. What we have found is below, but this post will …read more!

Happy birthday to Robert Pattinson (Cedric Diggory) who turns 19 today!

The current issue of The Weekly Reader takes students behind the scenes of Goblet of Fire. The article includes exclusive one-on-one interviews with Daniel Radcliffe, Katie Leung, Stanislav Ianevski, who plays Viktor Krum, and Robert Pattinson, who plays Cedric Diggory. There are some new photos of those cast members off the set, and the interviews …read more!

All right. Here’s where I do what needed to be done in the Fan Site Award post, but sometimes emotions are simply too much: Thank you. Not only to Jo (we’ll get to you later, my dear), but to all of you who come here every day and have fun with us. We can’t express …read more!

(This is Melissa’s attempt to act as a news reporter and get you guys all the straight info before resuming with the general insanity and exuberance that will classify today on the site. Just an FYI, because this is the most calm you will see me for quite a while.) JKRowling.com’s news section has been …read more!

Oh my lord am I glad I am awake at 4:13 a.m., as only a lunatic Harry Potter fan would be on this night. This weekend marks the one-year anniversary of the opening of Jo Rowling’s new Web site, and I thought this would be a very special day for very different reasons, and I …read more!