Happy Birthday, Harry Potter!

By now, I do not even need to mention our family's love for Harry Potter. It is just one of those things that we will always be obsessed with, and proud of it! We have made it a tradition to celebrate Harry Potter's birthday every year on July 31st. A lot of bookstores and other places have annual Harry Potter parties on that day, and we loved the idea of a yearly celebration of our nerdiness! Last year we made chocolate frogs for our friends and neighbors. They were such a big hit that we decided to do it again. We made chocolate frogs and peppermint toads and packaged them in Honeyduke bags. Then the boys took them to their friends. It was fun to see the joy on the faces of the people that we took them to... Definitely worth doing every year!

This year was a particularly special year to celebrate because the 8th "book" in the Harry Potter series was being released. It wasn't really a book, rather the script of the new Harry Potter play entitled "The Cursed Child" being released in hard copy format. BYU had a huge Harry Potter party at "The Wall" in the Student Center. We found out they were having a trivia contest and decided we had to attend. My sister, Hannah was here that weekend, so we formed a team with Christian and headed down to BYU in full costume. I knew that BYU students would be die-hard Potter fans, but even I was surprised. When we walked in the door, I think we were all gawking at the awesome decorations and ambiance they had created. We were greeted by Nearly Headless Nick with a trolley full of snacks. There was a huge Hagrid, along with paintings of the main characters, chalk art of Hogwarts, a graveyard, and a stage set up like a potions classroom. It was so well done. I LOVE living by BYU, where we can participate in good, fun, family activities like this.

There were over 50 people in the trivia contest, broken down into teams of 6. The questions started out fairly easy, but progressed to crazy hard! I was shocked that anyone knew some of them. Hannah, Christian, and I got teamed with two other 10 year olds. It was completely random, but it was a little unfortunate that half of our team weren't even alive when Harry Potter first came out. Haha! We did extremely well though and only missed a few really challenging ones. Out of about 40 questions, we missed 5.

Here are some examples of the questions we got right:

"How many knuts are there in a sickle?" (29)
"How much did Filch's QuickSpell Course cost?"(12 galleons)
"What actor played the first Dumbledore?" (Richard Harris-- we actually looked this up right before because we thought it might be a question!)
 "What was Dumbledore's full name?" (Albus Percival Wulfrich Brian Dumbledore)

 And some of the questions we missed:
"How many chocolate frog cards did Ron say he had collected?" (500)
"What type of broom did Ron ride in The Half-Blood Prince?" (Cleansweep 11-- we said 7, so close!)

When it was all over and the scores were tallied, we did NOT win. Judging by all of the other teams scores, I'm pretty sure we got second place, but it was never officially announced. It was a bummer because we thought we did awesome. Apparently, we will need to work a little harder for our next HP trivia! The whole evening was a total BLAST. The kids and adults had a great time.

The next day, we had Sunday dinner with Jonathon's family. We try to do some kind of theme every week so that everyone can bring something to contribute. We suggested a Harry Potter feast, and Jonathon's mom went all out to make it completely awesome! She covered the rims of the glasses with colored sugar to sort people into houses. So fun! We had Shepherd's pie, french onion soup, fish sticks, chocolate frogs, butterbeer, and sticky toffee pudding. The sticky toffee pudding was actually a recipe that Grandma E. used to make from England. It was so delicious!

 

The table setting

 

 A close up of the fun sugar cups... Yellow was for Hufflepuff!

 

Shepherd's pie and Fish sticks

 More Chocolate frogs

 Butterbeer

 Sticky toffee pudding... So Yummy!

Harry Potter and The Cursed Child (page 1)

As for "Harry Potter and The Cursed Child," I was super excited to read it and actually pre-ordered it on Amazon. When it arrived, I retreated to my bedroom to commence reading. By the next day, I was finished. My thoughts...

-Before you even start, realize that this is a PLAY. If you read it like a novel, you will be sorely disappointed. As a play, I think it would be really fun to see on stage. There is a lot of action, it moves fast, and I think the magic would be really cool to watch happen on a stage.

-As a book, it wasn't very good. In fact, I think that it should NOT have been released as a book. People's opinions of it would be much better if they had seen it as a play and not tried to read the script. I really wanted to like it, but it lacked Rowling's amazing writing. It moved way too fast to get any of the vivid details and deep plots that make the other books so rewarding.

-I was annoyed at the actual plot. It was super repetitive and not all that interesting. It didn't feel as plausible as she makes the other books feel. I didn't love the time-turner angle at all because I felt like that was one of the hardest things to make work logically in the originals, and this one wasn't done as eloquently as those. It was just a little too much magic and not enough reality. I also did not love the new characters like I loved the old characters. I'm sure this is almost entirely because of the lack of character development that is available in this format. I think it really needs the on-stage actors to make it work. The friendship between Albus and Scorpius felt forced and completely unexplored, again due to the format. Overall, I wanted something new, and it felt like it was rehashing all the old stories.

-All that being said, I did like catching up with all of the characters that I have come to love. It was fun to hear about what they are like as adults. I liked entering the Wizarding World again because of the nostalgia that it brings, but next time I would not do it via this book.

So, in conclusion...
Would I read the book again? No
Would I attend the play? Absolutely