Library celebrates new Harry Potter book with improvised Quidditch game

The Harry Potter books are having a second wave.

Author J.K. Rowling released Sunday a new play, “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” which inspired literary events all over the country.

Sitka Public Library held a tournament in honor of the books’ No. 1 sport – Quidditch, a game played by witches and wizards on flying broomsticks.

So, to adapt the game to our gravity-bound world, the library had to get creative. The sounds of ping-pong balls could be heard hitting the table.

This is tabletop Quidditch. It looks a bit like ping-pong, except students have to bounce balls off the table, through one of three hoops, and into a cup on the other side — make it through the hoop and earn a point, but sink it in the cup, but miss the hoop, then they have to answer a trivia question:

“Who teaches defense against the Dark Arts in Harry Potter’s 3rd year at Hogwarts.”

“Professor R. J. Lupin”

The students are on their game. But the biggest fan here may be the librarian, herself. Maite Lorente has always been a big fan of everyone’s favorite bespectacled, boy-wizard. So much so, she named her dog after him.

“When the seventh book finally was published — that same summer, my dog was born, and the poor thing has to carry the name of Harry Potter forever, because it’s a passion of mine,” Lorente said.

So when she heard that the theme for summer reading programs across the country was “On your mark, get set, read!” encouraging kids to go outdoors and be active, she just knew she had to incorporate the wizarding world’s favorite pastime.

“At the beginning we wanted to do an outdoors one, but that would have required a lot of time, so we just decided to go for an indoors Quidditch tournament,” she said.

She researched her options online, and transformed a ping-pong table into a Quidditch arena. Players have to hold onto a real broom with one hand while they toss the ping-pong quaffles with the other. But there was a bit of confusion about the brooms at the beginning.

“There was a moment where I realized that I had to explain to them that we were not going to be flying with brooms,” Lorente said. “And I think some of them got a little bit disappointed. But I just explained to them that librarians can do almost everything, but to this date none of us have gotten the secret of how to fly with a broom yet.”

The kids didn’t end up being too disappointed. They got pretty into it. Elliot played for Gryffindor, and he said there were a few moments when he wondered whether they’d make it to the end of the tournament.

“It was pretty fun and pretty tense,” he said. “Sometimes I felt like whenever one team got the snitch, I got really scared wishing they won’t get it into the cup. I was glad Slytherin didn’t win that round. They were doing pretty good, that’s why I didn’t want them to win that, so we had an easier time.”

It’s easy to lionize Gryffindor, but each house has its merits. Ravenclaw is smart, Hufflepuff is kind and Slytherin is ambitious.

“I love when they come and they say ‘I want to be in the Hufflepuff house,” Lorente said. You assumed that Gryffindor was going to be filled, and that was the case, right away. When I have a Ravenclaw or a Hufflepuff or a Slytherin come in, you know that makes my day.”

KCAW - Sitka

KCAW is our partner station in Sitka. KTOO collaborates with partners across the state to cover important news and to share stories with our audiences.

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