Heya, I’m back from holidays

Heya, I’m back from holidays and – sad to say – there is still no Arabic translation of the Harry Potter books out yet, at least not in Egypt. An unfilled gap? Harry Potter is huuge in Saudi-Arabia and the Emirates (in the English version), so why shouldn’t it be a success in the rest of the Arab world? And now a couple of announcements:

Our Harry Potter Five Cover Contest has now a closing date for submissions: July 29th. We hope to have one or more media partners to accompany the contest soon.

We added a Letters to… section at The Harry Potter Galleries, where you can write letters to the young actors of the HP movie and to Jo Rowling for them to read online. We will make sure that the kids and J.K.R. know of the waiting letters — it’s the best chance to contact them.

And at last, there is a remarkable sentence in today’s edition of The Independent: “Harry Potter is the Heidi of the 21st century”, said by Walter Leimgruber, a professor of ethnographics at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Never heard of Heidi, the Swiss heroine of children’s literature? Like Huck Finn and Harry Potter, Heidi is an orphan in a strange, foreign world who overcomes obstacles, remains strong and good-humoured and evokes emotions and sympathies that children can relate to. Heidi is the creation of Johanna Spyri and in honour of the 100th anniversary of her death, there are several events in Switzerland and Germany this year.