The HPA Launches the Illiteracy Horcrux and the Accio Books! Campaign
Calls on community to Donate a Book and Build a Library for a NYC inner-city school


Boston, MA - The Harry Potter Alliance has launched the Illiteracy Horcrux and will help battle it by collecting books for the New Beginnings Charter School’s new library. This year’s Accio Books! campaign, entitled Donate a Book, Build a Library, aims to collect at least 20,000 pre-school through young adult books for the new school and supply the resources it needs to establish the Imagine Better Library. The HPA has gathered several best-selling authors to inspire their young adult readers to be part of the campaign including John Green, Melissa Anelli, and Maureen Johnson.

“Literacy is at the heart of the Harry Potter Alliance’s mission,” said Executive Director Andrew Slack. “The Harry Potter novels inspired a generation of children and young adults to love reading. There are so many other books with the power to do the same and creating the Imagine Better Library is a great first step in continuing to inspire reading with children.”

New Beginnings Charter School agreed to name their new library the Imagine Better Library as a direct reference to a quote of J.K. Rowling’s from her 2008 Harvard University commencement speech: “We do not need magic to change the world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.” The quote, which will be painted on the wall of the library, serves as a reminder of the inspirational power of books.

Anyone can donate to the book drive from anywhere in the world. Books can also be donated within local communities. Further, on March 19-20 participants can make a Borders purchase, through the Borders Rewards Days program, and 10% of the proceeds will go to the HPA. Part of those funds will be used to purchase supplies the school needs to establish the library.

Literacy is a major tenet of the Harry Potter Alliance's mission and was one the central themes of the campaign that won the HPA $250,000 in the Chase Community Giving Challenge in 2010. In the past two years the HPA has collected over 55,000 books, donated to The Delta Center for Culture and Learning in the Mississippi Delta and Agohozo Shalom Youth Village in Rwanda. Accio Books! is the fifth Horcrux of the Deathly Hallows Campaign, which spans the months between the final two Harry Potter films. Fans of the series are encouraged to tackle seven real-world Horcruxes, or issues facing our world today, just as Harry and his friends must do the same in the fictional world of Harry Potter.
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The HP Alliance (www.thehpalliance.org) is a 501c3 nonprofit that engages Harry Potter fans in social activism. With over 70 active chapters and 40 volunteer staff, the HPA has donated five cargo planes to Haiti, 55,000 books, protection for thousands in Darfur, and made huge strides in anti-genocide, LGBT, and media reform advocacy, and more. Covered in hundred of major publications and praised by JK Rowling, Harry Potter celebrities, Paul Farmer, and a slew of NGO’s the HPA recently came in first place in the Chase Bank Community Giving Contest on Facebook winning $250,000.