THURSDAY 10/30/2003
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"The unabridged CD and cassette recordings run to a colossal length of more than 80 hours, each read by Stephen Fry.
Steven Edney, sales director of BBC Audiobooks, commented: "Harry Potter has broken all the rules in the audio category. The brand is now worth over £30 million at retail - a truly remarkable and unique achievement for the audio market."
The latest Potter book, The Order Of The Phoenix, is spread across 22 cassettes and 24 CDs.
Helen Nicoll of production company HNP, which created the recordings, said: "When we published the first book we said that if we made 10,000 sales of such a long unabridged book, that would be a fantastic achievement. To make a million sales is almost unbelievable."
A further 100,000 copies of Order Of The Phoenix are expected in the run-up to Christmas."
Her speech:
"It was a great surprise, and an even greater honour, to be told that I had been given the Prince of Asturias award for Concord. I certainly didn't set out to teach, or to preach, to children. In fact, I believe that, with rare exceptions, works of juvenile fiction suffer if the author is more intent on instructing his or her readers than beguiling them with a story. Nevertheless I have always believed the Harry Potter books to be highly moral. I wanted to depict the ambiguities of a society where bigotry, cruelty, hypocrisy and corruption are rife, the better to show how truly heroic it is, whatever your age, to fight a battle that can never be won. And I also wanted to reflect the fact that life can be difficult and confusing between the ages of eleven and seventeen, even when armed with a wand."
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The Childrens Librarians of the Oceanside Public Library are planning a different approach to Halloween this year. Instead of the usual ghosts, pumpkins, and black cats, the Childrens Program Room at the Civic Center Library will be transformed into the Shrieking Shack made famous in the Harry Potter series. Library staff dressed as Hogwarts professors, ghosts, and Dementors will combine storytelling and acting to create an interactive program with the audience. Children in grades 3 through 8 will be first year students trapped in the Shrieking Shack by Dementors, as Hogwarts professors and resident ghosts share the scary history of the school with tales of local ghosts and witches. The students will escape after a lesson in fortune telling and palmistry and then enjoy a feast of chocolate frogs and other tasty treats. Students are welcome to dress as Harry Potter characters or in Halloween costumes.
This free program will be held Monday, October 27 at 6:30 p.m. in the Childrens Room of the Civic Center Library, 330 North Coast Highway in Oceanside. Attendance is limited to children who are currently in grades 3 through 8. Free tickets may be picked up at the Childrens Desk of the Oceanside Civic Center Library. For more information, please call (760) 435-5590.
Source: http://wizardnews.com/
8-year-old wrote, sent 300-page manuscript to J.K. Rowling for book idea
Eight-year-old Dezi Gallegos is braced for disappointment if he doesn't get a response to the 300-page manuscript he sent to J.K. Rowling recently.
Gallegos' vivid imagination was on overdrive in the summer as he filled yellow pads with his own story titled "Harry Potter and the Fang of the Serpent." The typed version of his story, unedited by the adults who typed it, amounts to 59 pages of copy.
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Schoolchildren who worked as extras on the new Harry Potter film have been told they must forfeit their wages by their headmaster.
Donald Campbell has told pupils at Lochaber High School in Fort William, Inverness-shire, that the money they earned from The Prisoner of Azkaban will have to go into a school fund.
He said that because the work on the set in Glencoe was carried out during school hours, it counted as work experience and they could not receive payment for it.
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Fans of Harry Potter are to get the opportunity to land two roles in the next film of the wizard's adventures.
The walk-on parts will go to the two highest bidders at a gala charity event next month.
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David Smith, arts and media correspondent
Sunday October 19, 2003
The forces that brought you the Harry Potter films are locked in a titanic struggle with the powers behind the Lord of the Rings series for the services of a woman hailed as the new J.K. Rowling.
Her name is Cornelia Funke, a 44-year-old German mother of two, who is taking children's literature by storm. Championed by Barry Cunningham, the man who 'discovered' Rowling, Funke has sold half a million copies of her detective story, The Thief Lord, which spent 25 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and won several awards.
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Ananova:
JK Rowling awaits decision over Harry Potter parody
A Dutch court is nearing a decision on whether a magical, redheaded Russian heroine featured in a series of books is little more than a female version of Harry Potter.
While Tanya Grotter's popularity is firmly established in Russia, an Amsterdam court is set to make a ruling on a copyright lawsuit filed by JK Rowling and US Time Warner Entertainment.
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This just in from ananova.com.
Harry Potter goes 'green' for next instalment
JK Rowling says her next Harry Potter book will be printed on environmentally friendly paper.
So far, her novels about the teenage wizard at Hogwarts school, have used up an estimated 6.5 million trees.
The Scottish writer is among a number of authors, including Andy McNab, Philip Pullman and Ben Elton, who have pledged their support for the environment by using recycled paper.
Techniques pioneered in Canada allow, for the first time, paper from waste such as office paperwork to be used to make books, says The Times.
Rowling has guaranteed that her sixth Harry Potter book will be printed either on recycled or on "ancient forest-friendly" paper, which is sourced from sustainable planted forests.
At present, no major publishers of fiction in Britain use 100% recycled paper.
The Canadian edition of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was printed without chopping down a single tree, saving an estimated 40,000 of them.