Scholastic, the U.S. publisher of the popular Harry Potter series, is sponsoring an essay contest for readers 18 and under to describe “How the Harry Potter books changed my life.” Ten winners will fly to New York for breakfast with the author, J. K. Rowling. However, residents of Alaska and Hawaii are excluded, as they often are, because transportation costs are higher.
But the company goofed, saying that the contest was open to residents of the “continental United States,” and some Alaskan librarians didn’t realize they really had been geographically disenfranchised. E-mails expressing displeasure and disappointment crisscrossed the state the first week of September.
Charlotte Glover, youth services librarian at Ketchikan Public Library, felt burned after she unwittingly announced the contest on the radio. “It’s just past time for this sort of attitude that kids in Alaska are not watching the same TV shows, reading the same newspapers, and wanting the same things,” she said in the September 8 Anchorage Daily News.
Scholastic spokeswoman Lauren Jones confirmed to reporters that the two states were ineligible, but gave no specific reason. She said the company would probably change the wording to avoid “future confusion.”
Posted September 11, 2000.