Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Eight Cousins and Harry Potter

This Friday, I will be reading from and signing copies of INTO THE WILD at Eight Cousins, a children's bookstore in Falmouth, Massachusetts, as part of their Harry Potter Night festivities. Here are the details:

FRIDAY JULY 20 at 9pm
Eight Cousins Bookstore
189 Main Street, Falmouth, MA

The bookstore owner suggested that I come in costume. Ah-ha, I thought, a perfect time to try on my gorilla suit!


Did you know there's a National Gorilla Suit Day? Google told me there was, so it must be true. It's on January 31st. Anyway, I quickly realized that the costume is supposed to be at least loosely connected to either my book or Harry Potter 7, and to the best of my knowledge, there's no gorilla in either. (Or is there??? According to the HP7 spoilers I've read on Maureen Johnson's blog, JK made some surprising choices in writing HP7. Apparently, Rowling lost interest in Harry and elected to leave him out of the final novel altogether!)

So... my costume... To be honest, I kind of panicked about this for a little while. Coming up with costumes is not my forte. (Click here to read my blog post about Halloween, the most stressful of holidays.) But I think I'm almost all set now. I have borrowed a witch's hat from my mother-in-law (no joke intended) and a British academic robe from my husband, and I plan to drape a garland of fake ivy around my neck -- kind of a Harry-Potter-meets-the-Wild sort of theme.

Only problem is that I'm not exactly sure how to affix the witch's hat to my head. My hair is a bit, shall we say, fluffy. Hats tend to pop off my head as if my hair were spring-loaded. There isn't a clear place to use bobby pins on the hat either. So I'm thinking some sort of safety-pin-and-bobby-pin arrangement. Anyone have any better ideas? Nothing involving glue or staple-guns, please. Also, when people ask what I'm dressed as, what should I say?

Anyway, if you're in Cape Cod this weekend, I hope you'll swing by Eight Cousins on Friday night and say hi! Should be a fun party. Harry. Me. What more could you ask for?

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6 Comments:

At 1:39 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh! Too bad I can't be there. I'd totally take polaroids if you were in a gorilla suit!!!
You know what would be even funnier....wearing the British robe, witches' hat, and garland over a gorilla suit.
Now that is a true Kodak moment.
Oh I can't wait for HP 7...or should I say... Kevin Whitby?

 
At 6:53 PM, Blogger Sarah Beth Durst said...

Sookie: That's an awesome image! I didn't even think about a gorilla suit with the rest of the costume. Brilliant!

 
At 5:59 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

You know, it's formally possible that all the magical people in HP have been actual gorillas all along, just casting some sort of illusion spell to make themselves look like human beings. Your gorilla suit could "out" that little secret to the world.

In terms of hat-affixing, you can always make a circular loop of string to loop over the cone portion of the witch's hat, and then extend the string down over the brim to tie it under your chin. Yes, it would be visible over the brim of the hat, and might push the brim downward, but the goal is to keep it on your head without permanently mutilating it, so it might work.

 
At 4:55 PM, Blogger Sarah Beth Durst said...

Cathie: I am suddenly picturing Voldemort in a gorilla outfit doing the macarena... Scary image.

Thanks for the hat advice! The safety pins ended up working fine, but I bet your idea would have worked too.

 
At 7:20 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thank you for bringing such nice posts. Your blog is always fascinating to read.

 
At 10:23 AM, Blogger Sarah Beth Durst said...

Thanks, Emily! And thanks for reading!

 

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