Thursday 5th February marked the very first #HarryPotterBookNight. Bloomsbury came up with the idea and encouraged bookshops, libraries, schools etc.to take part in this magical night. We decided to shift our event to the Saturday, as we tutor mid-week and felt that a 7p.m. start wasn’t too practical for children (or tired parents) on a school night. And so, #HarryPotterBookNight took place for us just last night.
The idea behind this event was to celebrate the books, rather than the film franchise which so many immediately think of when the name ‘Harry Potter’ is uttered. We were very happy with this. Don’t get me wrong, film and television has it’s place without any shadow of a doubt, but books…well, they’re special too. As the event was free, we had no idea about numbers – we didn’t think to ask people to book in, pardon the pun. To be honest, I thought we’d get between 10-15 children at most. As it turned out, this was a little naive and we ended up with 35 children, plus parents, so it was rather busy in our teaching room last night.
Wizarding hats off to Bloomsbury, who put together a superb resource pack to use. The event began with a reading from ‘The Sorting Hat’ and it was wonderful to see a room of attentive listeners as I read Rowling’s infamous narrative aloud. We sorted our new students into their Houses, sang the Hogwarts song (in a variety of ‘tunes’, volumes and speed) and then split into Houses before the grand Hogwarts Quiz. It was close, however Gryffindor came out as the victors. Bravo to Gryffindor – I was Hufflepuff, but I think that I took the loss graciously.
Once the quiz was over, we drank Butter Beer (cream soda and butterscotch sauce), before icing sticky licky biscuits. Inbetween the sugar, each House designed their own magical creature and penned brand new spells fitting with the characteristics of their allocated House. All in all, it was a brillaint evening of fun, which we are very much looking forward to repeating next year. Here are some pictures of our Hogwarts students:
Do look out for us in the coming week’s edition of the Brentwood Gazette – I am sure that their photographs will be far better than ours!
Chicken and Frog Bookshop 
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