| Vote for 'Goblet of Fire' for children's BAFTA | | Posted Friday, November 10, 2006 2:49:04 PM by Blog57 Team | | Voting is now open for the only "public award" category in this years British Academy of Film & Television Arts' children's film and TV awards (BAFTA's). Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is one of 10 movies vying for the award. Goblet of Fire has also been nominated in the ‘Feature Film' category. You can go here to vote - only once I'm afraid. The awards ceremony will take place on Sunday, November 26th in London. .... | |
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| | | The Harry Potter-athon: Sorcery in Downtown Hamilton | | Posted Tuesday, October 31, 2006 10:48:00 PM by Blog57 Team | | Whether your Harry Potter books sit gathering dust on your bookshelf at home, or you've just re-read one of the six in place of your chemistry textbook, you will soon have the chance to experience the magic of Hogwarts right in the Hamilton community. Starting at 4:00 p.m. on Friday, October 27, many different clubs, merchants, community members and other Harry Potter fans in general will gather to read aloud and listen to all 17 chapters of the first book in J.K Rowling's award-winning series: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. The event, advertised as the Harry Potter-athon, will take place in the Hamilton Public Library Community Room free of cost and will run until the last chapter has been read. The time slots designated for the reading of each chapter have been filled by many volunteers from both the Colgate and Hamilton communities.... | |
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| | | Officials Urged to Ban Harry Potter Books From School Libraries | | Posted Monday, October 30, 2006 12:51:08 PM by Blog57 Team | | ATLANTA (AP) -- A suburban Atlanta mother has pleaded with a hearing officer for the state Board of Education to remove Harry Potter books from school libraries. Laura Mallory calls the popular fiction series an attempt to indoctrinate children in the Wicca religion. She says teachers don't assign other religious books like the Bible as student reading. Referring to the rash of deadly assaults at schools, Mallory said books that promote evil -- as she claims the Potter ones do -- help foster the kind of culture where school shootings happen. But Victoria Sweeny, an attorney representing the Gwinnett County Board of Education, responded that if schools were to remove all books containing reference to witches, they would have to ban mainstays like "Macbeth" and "Cinderella" as well.... | |
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| | | Three's company: Some kids still share rooms | | Posted Sunday, October 22, 2006 10:48:18 AM by Blog57 Team | | Just as their parents did when they were growing up, Sarah and Lauren Eskra are sharing their childhood in close quarters. Their books, dolls, clothes -- and memories -- coexist in a 12-by-12-foot room, softly decorated in pale purple and yellow in their family's compact house in the Schenley Park neighborhood near Coral Gables. Although 9-year-old Sarah sometimes craves time alone from her 6-year-old sister, the two agree there are advantages to bunking together. ''I like mixing our stuff most of the time because we can share things like our American Girl dolls and their clothes,'' says Sarah, a fourth-grader who has stamped her own style on the room with Harry Potter posters. ``And sometimes we talk at night, about what we're getting for Christmas and stuff like that.'' Sharing a room was once a childhood rite of passage, ranking right up there with waiting in line for the bathroom and fighting over the last piece of lasagna at dinner.... | |
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| | | Harry Potter Challenger Appeals to Georgia State Board | | Posted Friday, October 13, 2006 6:47:18 AM by Blog57 Team | | The parent who unsuccessfully sought the removal of the Harry Potter series from the Gwinnett County (Ga.) Public Schools' libraries appealed to the state Board of Education October 3. Laura Mallory told a hearing officer for the state board that the books promote witchcraft, citing studies showing that some children who have read them have attempted to cast spells or have become interested in Wicca. "Witchcraft is being mainstreamed to our children today," said Mallory. "My children are the most precious thing in the world to me. I surely do not want them to be indoctrinated into a religion whose practices are evil." But Gwinnett school board attorney Victoria Sweeny said the Potter books encourage children to read, noting that they are clearly "fantasy fiction" and are shelved in the fiction section of school libraries.... | |
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| | | Readers choose Harry Potter as favorite controversial title | | Posted Wednesday, October 04, 2006 2:47:35 AM by Blog57 Team | | (CHICAGO) More than 5,000 readers cast their votes for their favorite challenged books as part of celebrations of the 25th anniversary of Banned Books Week. The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling led all voting with 1,490 votes. Online voting was hosted by the American Library Association (ALA), one of the sponsors of Banned Books Week (September 23-30). The annual event celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one's opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of a wide range of materials in schools and public libraries. The top five vote getters were: Harry Potter series "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee (458 votes) "James and the Giant Peach" by Roald Dahl (257 votes) "Catcher in the Rye" by J.D.... | |
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| | | Bloomsbury aims extend Potter beyond his years | | Posted Sunday, September 24, 2006 6:47:34 PM by Blog57 Team | | Bloomsbury is turning to the lucrative market of books to tie in with television series in its latest attempt to expand beyond Harry Potter, as the boy wizard nears his final adventure. The publisher will focus on food initially, with forthcoming books by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, the television chef who once cooked with placenta, and Heston Blumenthal, the innovative culinary brain behind the Fat Duck restaurant. Nigel Newton, the chairman, said he had high hopes for the new genre. One just has to look at the best-seller lists, he said. The group has hired a new editor, Richard Atkinson, who specialises in food and television tie-in titles. It will publish a book to accompany a David Dimbleby BBC series about British buildings that airs next spring. Mr Newton, who discovered Harry Potter, disclosed his plans as the company unveiled interim profits of 4.22m, up 3 percent on the previous year, on sales up 6.5 per cent at 37.7m.... | |
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| | | Rowling Guards Last Potter Book From Guards | | Posted Friday, September 15, 2006 6:47:53 AM by Blog57 Team | | J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books, said Wednesday that she was almost barred from boarding a plane from the U.S. to the U.K. when airport security personnel demanded that her manuscript for her final book be screened or placed in her checked luggage. Rowling refused to give up the manuscript, which was bound with rubber bands. In a message posted on her website, Rowling wrote: "The heightened security restrictions on the airlines made the journey back from New York interesting, as I refused to be parted from the manuscript of book seven. A large part of it is handwritten and there was no copy of anything I had done while in the U.S. They let me take it on thankfully, bound up in elastic bands. I don't know what I would have done if they hadn't -- sailed home probably." 14/09/2006 .... | |
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| | | Jean Peerenboom column: Telling his son stories turns into ' ... | | Posted Monday, September 11, 2006 8:47:09 AM by Blog57 Team | | Nick Ruth, an author and father, would read his son David's favorite books over and over. He found himself starting to embellish them to entertain his son and himself. Together, they soon invented a character called Magical David, who always came in to save the day. About the same time, David was also very interested in insects and the whole family began raising Monarch butterflies together. Through creative discussion and drawings, Nick was hit with an inspiration. What if one of the caterpillars talked and turned out to be a wizard? Ruth decided to write a story about it for his son. He thought it would be a short story, maybe 20 pages. It turned out to be 224 pages and the beginning of a series called "The Remin Chronicles." The first installment is "The Dark Dreamweaver;" the second is "The Breezes of Inspire" (Imaginator Press, $16.95).... | |
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| | | Serious accounting errors discovered at Harry Potter printer | | Posted Thursday, August 31, 2006 12:47:00 AM by Blog57 Team | | St Ives, the firm best known for printing the Harry Potter books, said yesterday a young member of its finance department had left the company after accounting errors last year that only came to light as directors tidied up the books ahead of an annual audit. The printer said it had discovered the "serious accounting errors" at the division that prints in-store promotion materials for high street stores including Marks & Spencer, Halfords and Spar. .... | |
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