Congratulations to Fiction Alley, TLC editor Heidi Tandy’s uber-fanfic site, on celebrating its year anniversary today. I finally (after much bashing on the head by Heidi 🙂 signed up over there and whoo…I’ve never seen such a voluminous collection and expansive community. But the cutest thing about it has to be the email I received …read more!

Students at Governor Baxter School for the Deaf turned to “Harry Potter” this week to improve their literacy skills – even as they search for the sorcerer’s stone. The Baxter School became Hogwart School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and students were divided into Gryffindors, Slytherin, Raven Claw and Hufflepuff to learn about the fictional boy …read more!

Salon Magazine, long a fan of the books, notes the importance of today in its Literary History Today column.

From the Dallas Morning News comes this article wondering about the lack of parents in children’s movies, including the film Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Harry Potter’s magic is showing no signs of waning, according to the annual list of the most popular books read in Australia. The Daily Record has posted quite a …read more!

Happy Birthday, Harry Potter and JK Rowling! (since it’s already July 31 in the UK.)

Thanks to our readers in Australia who sent us word of a very special birthday party for a thirteen year old. In related news, my son’s just getting a cake for his Harry Potter themed birthday party this week.

To clarify on the post below: R/H and H/G mean Ron/Hermione and Harry/Ginny – in other words, if you care about who Ron and Harry and Hermione and Ginny end up dating during and after Hogwarts, those are the “ships” the SQ supports. It’s not exclusive to those and not all (not nearly all, actually) …read more!

News from the fanfiction world: An HP FF site that actively works for children’s literacy, The Sugar Quill, just made themselves over, so it’s a good time to go check them out. We don’t usually talk about fanfiction here, and do plugs even less, but I think SQ is an important site in the fandom, …read more!

Why thank you Lydia, for this fantastic page that contains Christian Coulson pics from his stint as Arturo Ui. Christian, sorry to drag out the yearbook…but that’s what you get when you become an evil overlord…

More on how children’s books are inspiring parents to read from the Lincolnshire Echo: Little bookworm Lewis Green is not the only one fired up by the magic of Harry Potter. Lewis (nine) is an avid reader and cannot get enough of his favourite stories – and neither it seems can his parents Pearl and …read more!