Library celebrates Harry Potter

MOSES LAKE — Normally, libraries are quiet places. The kinds of places you get shushed by a librarian if you make too much noise.

But Friday, at the Moses Lake Public Library, it was librarian Tommie McPhetridge who was making the noise.

“Are you ready?” McPhetridge asks one young girl as she hands her a piece of paper.

It’s her answers to a short quiz. And McPhetridge, wearing a giant, brown floppy wizard’s hat, is surrounded by a few dozen noisy kids, mostly grade-schoolers with a few middle-schoolers, dressed up in their Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry finest, hoping to find out which of that fictional school’s four houses — Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff or Slytherin — they belong to.

She uses those answers to “sort” the kids into their proper house. Because unlike in the novels and the movies, the hat on her head won’t do it all by itself.

“This is the sorting ceremony,” she said. “And every child will be sorted into their house, given a house tie, and then move on to make a wand, and go celebrate being a nerd.”

And with that, McPhetridge waves her wand, and loudly proclaims the little girl eagerly waiting in front of her has been sorted into Ravenclaw.

Even with the short quiz, McPhetridge said that the sorting ceremony simply doesn’t dispatch a child to a house if they don’t really want to belong to it.

“If something lies truly in their hearts, the sorting hat listens,” she said. “If you really do not want to be a Slytherin, you do not have to be a Slytherin.”

According to librarian Cariann Gray, Friday was the last day of the winter reading program at the Moses Lake branch of the North Central Regional Library, and so they decided to celebrate Harry Potter — one of the book series kids were given to read over the winter break — with a party including wandmaking, movie watching, potion making and general noisy fun.

“It’s the end of our winter reading program, and we’re celebrating that,” Gray said. “Most of the kids are more than familiar (with Harry Potter); it was our winter read.”

As Gray stands in the children’s section of the library, small kids run around her, and it’s sometimes hard to hear her over the noise.

“It’s a nice group for us,” she smiled.

“We went on a movie marathon last October, and we watched all the Harry Potters in a month,” said mom Selan Holland, whose children all gathered at the sorting ceremony to find out where they are supposed to go. “And they’ve been obsessed since, especially my 7-year-old, to see what true house they belong to.”

“We love this,” Holland said. “This is so much fun.”

If all the commotion was any indication, the love seemed to be shared by just about everyone there, kid, parent and librarian alike.

“I love Harry Potter,” she added in a dramatic and passionate voice. “I’ve bought many different things, I have many different things. I love Harry Potter.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at [email protected].