Libraries are so cool!

Click the link above to find the Sunnydale High library from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Hogwarts library from the Harry Potter books and films, and the Library from Doctor Who. 

For extra library awesomeness, check out this post on Book Riot about great library scenes in film (don’t worry, The Breakfast Club, Harry Potter, and Beauty and the Beast are all here!)

Leaky Con may be old news to some of you, but even so, you should check out this article from the Chicago Tribune’s Printer’s Row section. It’s all about young adults talking about the effect the Harry Potter series had on them and how it made them life-long readers. 

Being a Harry Potter fan may mean something more than just having a love of fantastical series:

Suzanne Keen, English professor and interim dean at Washington and Lee University, said she was struck that the sophomores who took her seminar last fall on Charles Dickens were far more capable of dealing with his long material than the students who took the class five years earlier.

“They had in effect learned how to deal with very long fiction, multi-plot novels, large casts of characters, humorous satire,” Keen said. She said other English professors have noticed similar improvements in students’ abilities to handle Victor Hugo’s work and William Makepeace Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair.”

What’s your take? Do you think Harry Potter has prepared you to read more, and perhaps more literary classics? Are you a part of “Gen Hex”? And what about JKR’s new book, The Casual Vacancy? Anybody picking it up?

The latest edition of mental_floss’ Lit Slits Quiz is Harry Potter themed!

They cut out a page of a Harry Potter book and you have to identify it.

I got 11/12 correct - what’s your best score?

Absolutely splendiferous article about YA literature and how it is connected to social change.  Read it and go out to make a difference in the world!