We're all fans of Harry Potter and also origami enthusiasts in this family. There are several very attractive designs on the cover of this book, so we ordered it eagerly as soon as we saw it in the Scholastic catalogue. ... Scholastic apparently had difficulties with supply so we ordered this in the winter, waited for months, got blindsided by quarantine lockdown in March, and finally got the book in September!

All this time we had been imagining a book like other fannish origami books with sheets of printed origami paper tucked in the back cover. The "included paper", however, is one sheet per design, and it's printed on sheets of regular book paper bound into the book. Not really the best weight or texture for origami, and worse yet, you have to actually cut the paper to shape. Anyone who's ever done origami knows how important it is to have an absolutely perfect square and how difficult it is to trim one by hand. Unless you want to cut your book to pieces, the best option is to colour photocopy the page you want -- and on photocopy paper, it's still not the best weight or texture-- and you still have to cut the squares to shape! Completely impractical that you have to destroy the book to make the articles and only giving one paper per model means that you aren't allowed to make mistakes -- and on top of that, the paper being unsuitable means that mistakes will probably lead to paper tears. Overall, a tempting but frustrating book.

Finally, a word on the instructions. The editors have chosen not to indicate mountain and valley folds with different symbols on the diagrams, although they do describe them in the beginning of the book. We first tried the Snitch, and it's a very basic origami "water bomb" aka balloon, so it wasn't a very difficult test, but the instructions seem to indicate fold direction by arrows. The Snitch paper was printed with a very detailed pattern, but it would be quite effective with a gold metallic origami paper. We then tested the dragon model. This was excellent, and it could be done effectively with plain paper and have its eyes added with a pen with perhaps a little shading if you want. You could make an entire dragon preserve with dragons of all species and never have to photocopy a thing. Most of the models are doable by adults for the entertainment of children. Actual children will need help. But once helped, this book will provide inspiration to create some fun models and find other Potter-adaptable patterns. ( )