Posts Tagged ‘Harry Potter’

The Tales of Beedle the Bard will be released on December 4th

The Tales of Beedle the Bard, the story book given by Albus Dumbledore to Hermione Granger in his last will, will be released on December 4th, 2008. The money will go to the Children’s High Level Group, which helps the institutionalized children. See it here.

400 million Harry Potter books

Bookseller.com says worldwide sales of Harry Potter books has exceeded 400 million.  That is 400,000,000 books. Also there are translations in 67 languages including Latin and ancient Greek.

Harry Potter prequel

J. K. Rowling has written a prequel story of Harry Potter for a charity auction. It is a short story involving Sirius Black and James Potter happening in 3 years before Harry was born. The story was sold for 25,000 pounds (48,855 US dollars.) The money goes to English Pen and Dyslexia Action in the UK. You can read the story here.

J. K. Rowling delivers commencement address at Harvard

“If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”

Recently J. K. Rowling gave the commencement speech at the Harvard University talking about failure and the power of imagination. You can read the full text, watch the video or download the audio here. You can download the video here at the leaky cauldron. As always one of the best.

“I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom: As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.”