Thanks to the readers who sent us this Coming Soon article in which David Heyman talks about Cuaron and Gary Oldman says joining the cast was like joining a family. This article also gives away major PoA plot elements as is becoming business-as-usual in the press at large. Sigh.

The New Haven Register [Connecticut, US] reports that members of several city churches want the “Harry Potter” series banned from school libraries and reading lists.

Newsround has a story about Hagrid’s moutain “hideaway” and the gatehouse for Hogwarts. We’re guessing that the gatehouse is where the students pass by Dementors, but we’re not sure about the hideaway.

Rita Skeeter’s Scoop got some great pictures of the interior of the CoS DVD and a screenshot from a game. Click here to see disc one, or disc two.

Thanks Jody, for sending in this scan of Scholastic’s ad for Book 5. It’s hard to tell, but the pages might have been extended by width to fit the book. We’ll try and find out.

Our reader Laurie tells us that thus far Borders Books had 203,579 reserve requests for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. We don’t know if that’s official – mark this as rumor please – but wow anyway.

Thanks to Cindy for scanning this Entertainment Weekly picture of the CoS DVD ad for us.

IGN.com has published a review of the CoS DVD. Said the reviewer: “Easily the biggest complaint about the Sorcerer’s Stone DVD is that you had to play stupid games just to access the deleted scenes on the DVD. Thankfully, Warner has listened to the complaints and all of the special features are easily accessed in …read more!

Check out Road Runner for news of a Harry Potter fan who paid $8,000 for (but apparently will not receive until publication) an author-signed copy of the unreleased fifth book. (Scroll down to “‘Harry Potter’ Fan Buys Unreleased Book” for story.)

Yes, BK and I are alive and safe, and back in the States. 🙂 Thanks to everyone who noted their concern. We picked a bad time to travel, admittedly, but we could not have had better hosts than our UK friends. We had a wonderful, wonderful time. Soon, we will have pics of our trips …read more!