The BBC has some interesting speculations as to why the delay in this article, I tend to agree with the idea that Warner Bros. have had a big hit this year and it seems like a good idea to move a guaranteed big hit into next year rather than have two big hits (the other being The Dark Knight) in the same year, rather than fear of the next James Bond movie (they’ve been released at the same time before and neither suffered).

Just goes to show that money and the bottom-line rule Hollywood more than what the fans and movie-goers want.

Amazon, who bought the only hand-written copy to be sold for £1.95m, ‘will produce a maximum of 100,000 Collector’s Edition copies aimed at replicating the look and feel of the original tales.’

British charity the Children’s High Level Group (CHLG) will produce three versions and Bloomsbury and Scholastic will publish a £6.99 edition ‘featuring additional commentary on each fairytale from Professor Dumbledore, and an introduction by Rowling.’

Also included in the article is the first trailer for the film, due for release on the 21st November 2008.

A great read for all ages with laughs and edge-of-the-seat action in equal measure.

I finished it a couple of days ago and it was very good. It’s not a replacement for Harry Potter, it takes place in a made up universe, massively different to our own and closer to medieval in age and outlook, but it’s wildly inventive, very funny and a great story. You don’t see too much of DomDaniel, the villain, but from the extracts I have read of the next books, he’ll be a recurring source of evil. There are a number of other characters and, strangely, the one for whom the series is named, is far from first on the scene, or the constant centre of attention.

Sage plays about with some of the more common notions of well-worn themes such as magic (called magyk), witches, wizards and other mythological entities like dragons and boggarts. This all makes for a nice change, and she has obviously spent a lot of time filling out her world, figuring out how it functions and how it all connects together, it’s not often you see a rubbish dump in a fantasy (or any fictional) book.

Trying not to give too much away (you may wish to skip the paragraph if you don’t want spoilers), the story centres around the death of the Queen, after childbirth. Her daughter, the new ruler of the Castle, was about to be executed too, when a quick thinking wizard and witch smuggler her out and arrange for Silas Heap to find her. She is raised in secret, as one of the Heap’s own children. Their son, Septimus, the seventh son of a seventh son, supposedly endowed with supreme magical power, who was born around the same time as the princess, dies, or appears to, but is actually given a sleeping potion by the matron and smuggled out as DomDaniel has ordered his kidnapping so he can have a powerful apprentice. The matron’s son and Septimus get switched in the Young Army orphanage and Septimus becomes a YA runt, Boy 412. After the Queen was killed the commander of the army becomes the supreme ruler, but he’s only a puppet for DomDaniel who will return to re-take the position of ExtraOrdinary Wizard, the top wizard in the land and try and kill the princess so he can gain control. There’s some good strong female characters in there, plenty of odd ones too, some novel twists on tired concepts and plenty of funny lines and situations.

(Spoilers here too, skip to next paragraph) I found some of the points a little too convenient, some of the get-outs and actions too easy, and I’m not sure if I knew who Boy 412 was before the end because I did know, or because it was pretty obvious. I didn’t find DomDaniel a particularly menacing or scary main villain, the Hunter was far worse.

Overall it was a great yarn, lots of setting up, as is needed in all first novels, but the rest of the series looks set to be good. There’s supposed to be seven books in the series (just like some other franchise I know) and Warner Bros., the people behind the HP films, have acquired the movie rights, hoping, no doubt, it’ll be as big a hit. Go read it if you’re a fan of action and fantasy.

He also does a good job of handling the characters relationships, I particularly like to on-off jealous but ultimately loving relationship of the two main characters, Matt and Kate, although it does tire after a while as misunderstanding and jealously then reconciliation cycle over and over.

The speed and constant development mean that there’s a barely a paragraph where something important isn’t happening or being laid down for future reference. An exciting read and I look forward to the next.

Anyway, I’ve just blasted my way through the first of (so far) two books about an alternative Victorian age where airships are the primary method of transporting goods and passengers around the globe. These aren’t the death-traps of the 30’s, filled with hydrogen, they use a totally different (and made up) gas called hydrium (which smells like mangos). Our hero, Matt Cruse, is a cabin boy aboard the luxury liner Aurora. Matt loves airships, he was born aloft, his father worked on the Aurora and he doesn’t like being on the ground. A routine trip changes when they find a balloon floating aimlessly across their shipping lane, with a man near-dead aboard. He says he’s seen things, strange creatures, but before they can find out more, he dies. Several months later and Kate de Vries takes a voyage. The dead man was her grandfather and she’s determined to find what he saw. Then the pirates come…

It’s fast paced (once you get past the initial setup, which I found entertaining anyway) and non-stop action. Kate is a strong, determined and very clever girl (and likes books, she’s not unlike Hermione, although trouble seems to follow her) and she’s not stuck to the traditions of her class, keen to break out of ‘ladylike’ pursuits she is supposed to be doing. She drags Matt along for adventure and discovery, not that he’s complaining, he likes her. It’s funny, and thrilling, inventive and exciting. It’s not particularly deep or complex, but it has plenty of twists and turns and skin-of-the-teeth escapes and I couldn’t put it down.

I admit that I am a huge airship fan, they have a romantic image for me (once you get past the combustible gas) and maybe my opinion is off because I was interested in simply reading about a story in a world where airships rule (if we could have produced helium rather than relying on hydrogen they may still be big), but I loved it. Why aren’t people writing thrilling adventure stories like this for adults too? All the exciting fiction I seem to be reading of late is, technically, aimed at kids. It’s a little Clive Cussler, only without the history, the classic cars and planes or the boats (or Clive himself showing up!).

For some reason I found it reminded me of Mortal Engines (probably the airships). Well worth a read if you like a good old-fashioned ripping yarn, already added the next book, Skybreaker, to my wishlist.

Personally, I think it’s a good thing, most fans would agree that some great material has been cut from the previous books and that the plots of some of the movies have been rushed through to try and fit them all in to a 2 and a half hour movie. On the other hand, not sure why they split the films so far apart, I’d rather see them closer together in the same way Kill Bill was released or the second and third Matrix films.

You can read more on the BBC and the Guardian sites.

This term has seen the seven to 11 year olds learning subtraction with the help of a Potter-esque “spell”, writing their own plays based on the best-selling books and even keeping fit by pretending to get on and off imaginary broomsticks.

Year classes have been named Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin, after the school houses at Hogwarts, the wizards’ school attended by Harry in the novels and hit movies.

The children wave wands as they join in the fun of learning and staff have got in the spirit of things by donning wigs and costumes.

All this has changed them from being in the bottom 25 per cent of schools nationally to just outside the top 5 per cent over the last three years and be praised as ‘outstanding’ in a national report.

Example lessons from the “Harry Potter curriculum”

Maths: subtraction is seen as a “spell” which has been created by Harry Potter. Children have to say the magic words “numerus subtracticus” when they give an answer eg “58 minus 14 - numerus subtracticus - equals 44″.

English: to learn about dramatisation, pupils create their own scripts for plays based on the text from chapter two of J K Rowling’s debut novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

Art: imagine what Harry Potter would do if he painted a version of Vincent Van Gogh’s 1889 masterpiece The Starry Night. The Potter-inspired versions featured witches, dragons and other beasties.

History: the history of flight, starting with a discussion of Harry Potter’s broomstick, then discussing if that is real and tracing the real development of aviation, including the Wright brothers.

Geography: comparing the children’s home town of Arnold, Nottinghamshire, with Goathland, North Yorkshire, where the scenes of Hogsmead Station were shot for the Potter films.

Computers: take a virtual tour of Harry’s fictional school Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry on the internet, then create a map of Robert Mellors Primary and Nursery School using similar information.

Science: put a stick of celery in a beaker of blue dye and see how it takes in the fluid, turning the celery from green to blue. Discuss whether Harry Potter could use this to turn one of his foes a different colour.

Music: learn how to create a mood by performing a piece of music relating to the theme “Hogwarts at night”. Using percussion instruments, the children made appropriately spooky sounds.

PE: balance and co-ordination is taught by getting the pupils to pretend they are Harry Potter and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger getting on and off their broomsticks (pupils used imaginary broomsticks).