Hogwarts School of Bookcraft and Bloggery: Transfiguration Class

Greetings, students! This is Professor Aila here with the Transfiguration Class for the BB Creativity Project, hosted by Nori, under the RED team.

In this feature, each blogger will be hosting a class based on a subject from Harry Potter; we have professors spanning from Herbology to Defense Against the Dark Arts. It is my pleasure to introduce you to the Transfiguration Class, where all our contributors put together a curriculum to help YOU, yes you, discover tips on transforming your blog, as well as book recommendations.

What are you waiting for? You can start by finding the blogger whose house you’re in, and read on from there!

Blogger/ House	Tips on Blogging to Transform Your Blog	A List of Books that Changed Your Life
Tuzi Audacious Society of Library Critics Gryffindor	Add new features. Make the layout/design unique to your personality and reflect the type of books you usually read. Bookish themes are cool.	Eragon Nancy Drew The Witches by Roald Dahl Series of Unfortunate Events Magic Tree House Mysterious Benedict Society– all of these got me into the fantasy & historical fiction genre. Gail Carson Levine’s books (Fairest and Ella Enchanted) are THE reason I adore fairy-tales. These books set me up to become a life-long reader.
Claire Cover to Cover Ravenclaw	Create digital folders specific to post ideas to sort your ideas with related codes and graphics. Make use of a notebook and calendar, digital or physical, to encourage productivity.	Enjoying the Harry Potter series (obviously, I guess) And Then There Were None The Gilda Joyce and Percy Jackson series The Mysterious Benedict Society The Traitor’s Wife when I was younger shaped my current reading habits.
Angel The Bookish Angel Ravenclaw	Write and publish content you know you want to read yourself. Don’t be pressured by what everyone else is doing and just have fun!	The Color of Our Sky by Amita Trasi is a beautifully written book about family, friendship, culture and innocence. It made me think about a lot of things. The Hunger Games trilogy is and always will be my number one favorite trilogy. Katniss is my role model for being strong, brave and courageous. Silent Honour by Danielle Steel is the first WWII fiction I’ve read and its story will always be with me.
Tiffany The Bookish Thought Ravenclaw	When you write a post, don’t just write. Use graphic, quote, gifs, or anything beside text to make your post more ‘attractive’. People won’t get bored when reading your post.	Harry Potter (I know it’s cliche but…) Percy Jackson
Shannelle Art of Escapism Ravenclaw	I struggle with a million unwritten drafts, so here’s how I try to combat that. Make a list of the posts you want or have to write this week. Make it as short or as long you want, just make to arrange it by most important on top and least important at the bottom. Then, go write as many posts as you can. By the end of the week, make a list for next week, but put the unwritten post ideas from last week on top. This helped me stick to writing the posts I need to, but I also didn’t keep to it too strictly. Feel free to try this out, and I hope it works for you!	I’ve got one book for you: The Summer of Chasing Mermaids.. It didn’t get me started on reading or anything, but it changed my life as a book reviewer. I’d become a little numb to books, and The Summer of Chasing Mermaids finally made me feel so much, after so long. I loved that it had had people of color, people with disabilities, two adorable boys for my heart, and I love all the themes that it tackled and got right. It was like a bright, pop of color in the middle of so many dim books, and it’s one of the only books that’s made me passionate to push it on other people, as you can tell.
Nori ReadWriteLove28 Hufflepuff	Make sure that you add some variety to your posts! Of course, everyone likes to see Top Ten Tuesdays, other blogging memes, and book reviews, but it’s also nice to see something unique! Try to incorporate some unique posts or features, or even discussion posts! It’s a nice way to take your blog to the next level!	Carpe Diem by Autumn Cornwell ALL BOOKS by Tamora Pierce The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater Since You’ve Been Gone by Morgan Matson and countless others.
Aentee Read at Midnight Slytherin	you don’t have to change up your whole site, even small changes in your graphic banners each post would be enough- I have a post recommending apps you can use to make blog graphics from your phone HERE. You can also change up the content. You don’t have to focus solely on book reviews. Other fun posts could be Read-alikes, Discussion Post, Spoiler Filler Chat Post, blogging tips posts!	The GOOSEBUMPS series – I learned English reading them (and later on, the Harry Potter books). I think they’re also responsible for my current love for all things supernatural and fantastical in both books and tv/movies
Aila Slytherin	Organization is key, and appealing to your audience’s aesthetics. No one wants to stumble on a blog and get instantly confused. Create a navigation system for your posts and use tags/categories to help with that! That way your posts are easily accessible to viewers. In addition, we all love looking at pretty things, let’s not lie. 😛 Take advantage of that and beautify your blog!	The Lightning Thief Lord of the Flies Fangirl
Aimee Deadly Darlings Slytherin	Make sure that your personality shines through in your post. When you’re writing a post, just write as if you’re writing to a very close friend of yours. That way, you’ll sound both natural and enthusiastic!	Percy Jackson and the Olympians All the Rage (Courtney Summers) Little Peach (Peggy Kern) None of the Above (IW Gregorio) The Addicted Series (Krista & Becca Ritchie)
Joey Thoughts and Afterthoughts Slytherin	Push the boundaries of your voice through crafting discussions you have a vested interest in regardless of the saturation of topic in the community. Consider the use of a fishbone diagram to map out potential ideas to pick on specific topics.	The Outsiders (Hinton) Handmaid’s Tale (Atwood) and More Than This (Ness) are three titles in different parts of my reading journey from academia to blogging career.

And that wraps up the lesson for this week, folks! I hope you’ve been taking notes, because there is some gold advice that our bloggers have given.

What to look out for next week: 

Shannelle from Art of Escapism will be teaching the POTIONS CLASS!

Here you’ll find bloggers that are multi-skilled and a list of books, personally picked by our staff, that has the best mix of genres.

And with that, professor Aila is out for the weekend. Happy reading, class!

Special thanks to Aentee from Read At Midnight for creating the lovely banners!