With the onslaught of bad news continuing on and no real end in sight, as the world navigates the unprecedented situation it finds itself in, author J.K. Rowling is here to try to cast a little bit of magic over proceedings. In an effort to make things a bit more bearable, the author of the Harry Potter series has launched an online hub for children, families, and teachers who are stuck inside due to self-isolation.
J.K. Rowling announced the launch of the hub on Wednesday, writing, "Parents, teachers and carers working to keep children amused and interested while we're on lockdown might need a bit of magic, so I'm delighted to launch harrypotterathome.com."
The launch of the hub, which is just one of many Harry Potter-based hubs, including Pottermore, comes just a week after Rowling and her agents The Blair Partnership relaxed copyright permissions on the Harry Potter books. This was done to allow teachers to post videos of themselves reading the books out loud to their students, enabling them to continue to enjoy the wizarding world adventures despite self-isolation. As British schools are currently closed, this will assist teachers with remote reading time, allowing teachers to post any videos they do make onto school secure networks or closed educational platforms only, right up until the end of the school year.
Since their release all those years ago, The Harry Potter book series has proven to be instrumental with regards to encouraging children to read, with the books having often been used in lessons in school across the world. Not only is J.K. Rowling aware of this, as are her agents, but she has decided to take no financial advantage of it. For now, at least. As well as Rowling, another Wizarding World partner, Audible, has launched a free minisite too, at stories.audible.com, that offers a "free destination offering educational, entertaining, immersive children's and family audiobook content." with this and the launch of the new Harry Potter at Home hub, children are sure to be reading more than ever.
With the current closure of the Wizarding World theme parks and Warner Bros. studio tours indefinitely on pause, people will be desperate to get their Harry Potter fix from somewhere. With the self-isolation nobody can leave the safety of their home, not physically anyway, so now is the perfect time for Rowling to conjure this new hub, allowing people to at least escape into the magical world of Hogwarts. According to the website the online hub Harry Potter at Home will feature "special contributions from Bloomsbury and Scholastic, nifty magical craft videos (teach your friends how to draw a Niffler!), fun articles, quizzes, puzzles and plenty more for first-time readers, as well as those already familiar with the wizarding world."
Just in case you've been living on the moon with your eyes shut and your fingers in your ears, Harry Potter is a hugely successful series of fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. The novels chronicle the lives of a young wizard, Harry Potter, and his friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. This comes to us from J.K. Rowling's official Twitter account.