A witch, a wizard and a three-headed dog walked into Gibson’s Bookstore on Sunday, and they were all looking for the same thing – the eighth installment of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – released that day.
The book, which is the rehearsal script of a two-part stage play that premiered Saturday in London, garnered the attention of about 400 local children and adults, who arrived at the Concord bookstore in costumes modeled after the four houses of Hogwarts Wizarding School – Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin – and magical creatures, like Fluffy, the giant three-headed dog from the first book of the series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
Addison Sain, 9, and her cousin, Bodhi Bhattarai, 2, of Concord were dressed as Hogwarts students, both from the Gryffindor House.
Addison has already read all seven of the Harry Potter books. She said her favorite parts are the “adventures” of Harry, Ron and Hermione, three students at the wizarding school who come face to face with Voldemort, the dark wizard who killed Harry’s parents, time and time again.
Mariah Hancarik, 13, of Bow came to the release party wearing a cape emblazoned with the Hogwarts seal. She said she owes a lot to Harry Potter for getting her “through the tough times” that come with becoming a teenager and growing up.
But these children are hardly the series’ most loyal fans.
“I already started reading the new book,” said Addison’s mother, Rosamond Cain, who remembered going to launch parties with her sister Deodonne – dressed on Sunday in a Gryffindor cap and scarf – when the original books were coming out in the mid-2000s.
“There’s a big nostalgia factor,” said Elisabeth Jewell, the bookstore’s events coordinator, who spent the afternoon wearing a curly pink wig as she concocted the faux-potions “Elixir of Featherweight” and a “Draught of Liquid Sunshine,” in a flawless English accent for a gargle of onlooking children.
“It was really great to attend and host all the midnight releases, back when the original series was being released,” Jewell said. “We were really looking forward to doing it again and helping a lot of the original Harry Potter demographic share this with their children.”
Books A Million in Fort Eddy Plaza held a midnight release party reminiscent of the old Potter days from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. on Saturday night, manager Timothy Frantz said. It saw about 200 visitors.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which is set 19 years after the events of the seventh novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, follows an adult Harry as he and his three children struggle to deal with his complex past.
Although the play is not written by J.K. Rowling, the series author, the plot was designed by her, and then put to paper by playwright Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany.
Edie Perkins, a sixth-grade reading teacher at Bow Middle School, said she hopes that the format will encourage more students to explore reading plays.
The Scholastic company, which is printing the American copies of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, has already released 4.5 million copies of the book.
Gibson’s owner Michael Herrmann said the store ordered 160 copies for the release date, half of them pre-orders. He said he was “blown away” by the popularity of the play, which was sold out within an hour of the party’s start.
“The demand has been greater than we anticipated,” he said. “We’re going to have to re-order and plead and beg with the publisher to get more in on Tuesday. ”
(Leah Willingham can be reached at 369-3305 or lwillingham@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @LeahMWillingham.)