SWANSEA — Copies of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” practically flew off the shelves and into the eager hands of the third graders at the Luther School Friday morning.

There were other fiction novels that interested the students too, like “The Tiara Club,” the “Dork Diaries,” and “The 39 Clues.”

“You can go on adventures in your mind,” said student Damien Caetano, after opening the cover of “Into the Gauntlet,” another saga of “The 39 Clues.” “I’m really good at picturing it in my head.”

Caetano and the other children chose their books carefully from the new Luther School Library.

The library opened a couple of weeks ago in a classroom on the second floor, after having been closed for years.

Luther School Principal Sean Scanlon, who took the helm for the new school year, said it was a goal of his to reopen the library.

“It was an easy decision to make,” Scanlon said. “You want them to find things they’re interested in reading. It’s leisure reading.”

Since the summer, Scanlon, along with teachers and parents, especially Laura Zorra, have worked to fill the shelves with books for children in grades 3 to 5. The Luther School educates children in just those grades, while other schools in town have students in the lower grades.

Each class will visit the library every other week and make their own book selections. Parents have volunteered to help the kids and assist them in checking books in and out of the library.

Scanlon said they’ve spent about $1,500 on new books and are still beefing up certain sections of the library.

“A few hundred have come in,” Scanlon said.

Another shipment of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” is on the way.

“I love it,” said teacher Karen Koutsogiannis. “It’s really, really exciting.”

Student Anna Medeiros was just tucking into “The Dork Diaries.”

“I love it,” Medeiros said. “I like it because I picture it in my mind, what she’s saying. And, the pictures really take me there.”

Student Byron Bell chose “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” to read, as did Hannah Santos.

“It’s funny,” Santos said. “It’s fun to read.”

Bell thought so too.

“It’s funny,” Bell said. “I don’t really know how to explain it. It’s really interesting.”

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KELSO, Wash. — Talk about fairy tales, a Kelso, Wash. mom threw a Harry Potter birthday party for her son and it turned into a business.

Catherine Jabush created wands for all the young wizards at her son’s party and two years later, she’s still turning sticks into magical gifts.

That’s because parents across the country are placing plenty of orders, especially now, for the holidays.

“Making and creating is what I love to do. My inspiration is right out the window,” Jabush said, referring to the wooded area outside her home.

She uses Willow, hickory, oak and drift wood to fashion special wands and sells them online as the Woodland Wandolier.

“I might cast a Harry Potter spell and see if I can lift you off the ground,” she said, smiling as she played with one of her creations.

In her home studio, where a spider takes up permanent residence and a troll overseas operations, anything seems possible.

“The designs are different on every one, depending on my hand movements, my mood, if I’m working slow or fast. And they each have to be different because they’re like snowflakes,” she explained.

Before the hot glue, there’s sanding and trimming and after that, there’s the painting and decorating.

“There’s a lot more love in it and it’s going to last longer,” she said.

Before each wand is finished there is an 8- to 10-step process and somewhere along the line, Jabush believes that a bit of magic happens, too.

“Because of the way they bring people together,” she said.

Her customers are not just kids, they are therapists, brides and grooms, or even grown children purchasing magic for their parents.

This holiday season, Jabush said her “Frozen” wand has emerged as the best seller. It originated from a special order online.

Jabush described herself as a lifelong artist who once created castles out of clay. Now, because of the wands and what they can do for kids, she has found her happy ending.

“I’m always thinking about children. What they might be thinking, what they might do with them,” she said. “I have to delight them!”

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The Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, written by Jeff Kinney, have sold more than 150 million copies around the world.

Based on character Greg Heffley, the books follow him through his life at school and on adventures with his friends and family.

Jeff first came up with the idea for Diary of a Wimpy Kid in 1998 but it wasn’t until six years later, that it was first published online.

Now Jeff has just released his ninth book in the series called The Long Haul and will be speaking to Newsround this week.

Send us your questions for Jeff

We want you to send us your questions for Jeff and we’ll ask him as many as we can.

Maybe you want to know how he comes up with ideas for the books or perhaps you want to know why he wanted to become an author.

Whatever you’d like to ask him, get in touch and let us know.

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‘Tis the season to be Harry

On the first day of Christmas, J.K. Rowling will give to you: new Harry Potter material. On the second day of Christmas, she’ll give you some more. And so on, through the 12 days leading up to Christmas Eve.

The author announced the new stories in a newsletter to Pottermore members, explaining that each new installment would be posted at 1 pm GMT (8am ET) every day beginning Dec. 12. The email promises “wonderful writing by J.K. Rowling in Moments from Half-Blood Prince, shiny gold Galleons and even a new potion or two.”

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The actress, who appeared in five Harry Potter films as Cho Chang, is starring in SundanceTV’s miniseries One Child, in which she plays a British woman who was born in China and given up for adoption. When her birth mother contacts her, she learns she has a brother who was wrongfully convicted of murder — and that it’s up to her to get him out of prison.

“They are emotionally draining,” Leung tells The Hollywood Reporter of her heavy scenes. “At the same time, they are very real.”

In a chat with THR, Leung also reveals what she thinks of the upcoming Harry Potter spinoff films, why she chose One Child, and how she prepared.

What was the audition process like?

I auditioned for it way back. Three or four years ago. I fell in love with the script, but it took quite some time for it to happen.

What kind of preparation did you do?

I watched the documentary Somewhere Between, which was very helpful for the role. It’s the journey of four teenage Chinese girls who had been adopted and are living their lives in America with Caucasian parents. It was interesting to see from their perspective where they were in life.

There are a number of powerful scenes in this, like when your birth mother explains why she gave you up. What was it like shooting those scenes?

They are very emotional and emotionally draining. At the same time, they are very real because it’s not difficult to get into that frame of mind of what it would be like without a mother — to have gone through 20-something years thinking you were abandoned because your family didn’t want a girl. To discover that was the case, and that your mother is living in poverty and your dad wanted a son hurt her more than she thought.

What was the best part of this project?

Being involved in such a heartbreaking story makes you very appreciative of your own life.

Do you still get fan attention from Harry Potter?

I still get a lot of mail and contact from fans, especially on Twitter. They are so lovely and dedicated. You would think after the films are finished and the books written, it would diminish, but that is not the case. They are keeping the world alive through social media.

And they’ll make the spinoff movies.

I can’t wait to see what they’re doing with it, especially because David Yates is directing again. It’s going to be amazing, no doubt.

One Child airs Friday and Saturday at 9 p.m. on SundanceTV.

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For some “Harry Potter” fans, watching the movies, reading the books, and visiting the theme park isn’t enough. They want to BE Harry Potter – to find out what it’s like to be a student at the magical school Hogwarts and truly live the life of a wizard or witch.

If you are one of those fans, The College of Wizardry is here for you.

The event is a LARP (live-action roleplaying game) in which “Potter” fans can travel to a castle in Poland and pretend to be professors, students, and other characters at the imaginary Czocha College of Witchcraft and Wizardry. According to the event’s website, it’s put together by volunteers from Denmark and Poland.

“It is a collaborative experience in the Nordic larp tradition, and is created by the players and organizers together, with everyone pitching in and helping make the magic come alive,” the website reads. “It’s essentially the same as when kids use curtains as robes and sticks as wands and run around pretending to be witches and wizards – except we’re grownups with nicer costumes and a lot of experience in designing interactive experiences for each other.”

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In the battle for Christmas book sales the competition has come down to two giants of tween fiction.

On one side are the homegrown anarchists, Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton, and on the other is the all-American Wimpy Kid.

This year’s contest appears to be a rerun of last year’s dash-to-the-finish when Jeff Kinney’s eighth instalment of the Wimpy Kid Series, Hard Luck, ran down the 39 Storey Treehouse and John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars.

Only a late resurgence from the Man Booker Prize winner, Richard Flanagan, and Matthew Reilly’s latest blockbuster, The Great Zoo of China, a Jurassic Park with dragons, might upset Kinney and Griffith’s quest for sales domination.

But there is no enmity between fellow travellers. Jeff Kinney, says Griffiths, is “welcome to come and play in our treehouse any time”.

Strong growth in children’s book sales have generally marked a year of moderate growth and consolidation for independent and chain booksellers in Melbourne and Sydney – a year in which political biographies disappointed, the celebrity memoir proved a covert bestseller and online sales soared.

“The fact that children are still coveting and choosing books over all the other enticements in TV, movies and the internet really speaks to the unique power of the written word,” says Dymocks’ buying manager, Sophie Higgins. “Perhaps also the fact that parents know how important it is for children to have strong literacy skills.

“Our growth, calendar year-to-date, is well into double digits and last year was also a growth year for children’s books; it really is such a good news story.”

After initial fizz, interest in political biographies has fallen away, with the exception of Julia Gillard’s My Story. Kinokuniya made a conscious decision not to promote political biographies in its Christmas catalogue, correctly guessing interest in them would wane.

“I think people have had enough,” says Jon Page, general manager of Mosman’s Pages & Pages. “We lived once with all the media speculation and I really don’t think people are keen to relive it all in book form.”

Mark Rubbo, managing director of Melbourne’s independent book chain Readings, says the Gillard book sold well on first release but hasn’t maintained the sales intensity.

“I wildly predicted that we would sell 10,000 copies and so far we have sold over 2000 – still very good but way off 10,000.”

Celebrity biographies from the likes of Lena Dunham, John Cleese, Amy Poehler and Cary Elwes have been racing out the door, according to Kinokuniya, while short story collections or novellas from Christos Tsiolkas, Michelle de Kretser, Patrick Rothfuss, Margaret Atwood and Hilary Mantel have ben selling in place of full length fiction.

Such is the interest in Dunham’s Not That Kind of Girl, The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer and Poehler’s Yes Please, Rubbo suggests non fiction titles by feisty women should become a new sub-genre.

The online Australian bookstore, Booktopia, expects its biggest sales ever in the run up to December 10, its Christmas order cut-off, capping off a year of strong sales across hundreds of titles, instead of the sharp peaks of previous years.

Chief buyer John Purcell predicts Big Little Lies, The Rosie Effect, The Great Zoo of China to be popular holiday reads.

Page has reordered Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North a dozen times since the author’s Man Booker prize win.

Last year Dymocks recorded some of its biggest pre-Christmas sales days. This year, says Higgins, sales are largely positive but much more variable, week to week.

At Readings, overall sales are up slightly on last year, online sales by a “huge amount”. Other booksellers Rubbo knows report similar experiences.

It’s been a strong year for Pages & Pages but the next three weeks makes or break the year. “Let the madness begin,” says Page.

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Touch-screen technology could be a vital new weapon to combat low literacy levels in the key target groups of boys and disadvantaged children, according to new research published by the National Literacy Trust and Pearson.

This is the second year that the Early Years Literacy Survey has been carried out examining the use and attitudes to books and stories on touch-screen devices with children aged three to five and the influence of reading practices on young children’s vocabularly.

Its findings show the benefits of using touch-screen technology for boys, who engage with reading and educational activities for longer than with books alone.

Twice as many boys as girls look at or read stories on a touch-screen for longer than they look at or read printed stories (24 per cent versus 12 per cent) and more boys than girls use a touch screen for educational activities rather than for entertainment (36 per cent versus 28.2 per cent).

The findings also reveal that technology can be a more engaging learning tool for disadvantaged children at age three to five, than books. Twice as many young children from poorer households with a socio economic grouping of DE read stories on a touch-screen for longer than they read printed stories than children from AB households.

Furthermore, a higher number of children from DE households than AB households use technology more for educational activities than for entertainment (43.2 per cent vs 30.4 per cent).

Jonathan Douglas, director of the National Literacy Trust said: “Our second Early Years Literacy Survey with Pearson throws up very interesting evidence on the positive impact of combining technology with books on pre-school children’s vocabulary. Children’s early language and vocabulary skills lay the foundation for their future success and it is crucial that we recognise the opportunities that technology brings for engaging boys and poorer children in reading”.

Additionally, the survey highlights the increasingly significant role that technology plays in the lives of under-fives, both at home and in their pre-school educational environment.

It estimates that now more than 90 per cent of children aged three to five have access to touch-screen technology at home. Access to touch screens in early years settings has doubled since 2013 (from 22 per cent to 41.3 per cent) and nearly a third of all parents say their children read stories on both a touch screen and on paper compared to 70 per cent of parents who say that their children read books only in a typical week.

A varied reading diet could also be a route to improved vocabulary, according to the research findings. Children aged three to five have a wider vocabulary if they read stories in both print form and on a touch-screen compared to those who don’t use technology (20 per cent versus 15 per cent).

The research also explored the use of technology in early years educational settings, and found that the majority of pre-school teachers and practitioners say they want more access to touch-screen technology (60 per cent). However, practitioners feel far more confident sharing stories with children on paper rather than on a touch screen (90 per cent versus 55 per cent), and a quarter do not think technology has a place in their pre-school educational environment.

Julie McCulloch, director of policy and thought leadership at Pearson UK, added: “This research highlights the shifts in literacy learning that are enabled and driven by technology, both in the home and in more formal settings. We’ll be exploring how we can do more to support parents and practitioners to make the most of these trends to support improved outcomes for young people, in the UK and around the world.”

Pearson has announced that it will be directing its flagship social impact campaigns towards improving literacy rates over the next five years.

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