Chapter Text
Today was the day Daisy had been affectionately referring to as D-Day.
The day Harry’s wooloo powers would be tested in the most terrifying trial of courage yet.
The day all the tiny dinosaur parts Harry had been cutting out would become something more.
Today was the day of the dinosaur craft.
Harry stood before a crowd of children. He was a Gryffindor. He could do this!
“What’s even noisier than a dinosaur?” Harry asked, in his best rhetorical joke voice.
Many answers were shouted back at him, ranging from “Me!” to “your mum”.
Harry smiled a knowing smile, for this was in fact a maths joke.
“TWO dinosaurs!” he answered, confidently.
For a moment, the library was so silent that, if people still did things like that, you could have heard someone turning the pages of their book.
Then the child who’d shouted “me” made the most impressive roar, and Harry joined in (to prove a point, and because roaring is a normal Gryffindor thing that Gryffindors do).
Two dinosaurs were indeed noisier than one.
A few minutes later, the library was full of misshapen dinosaur abominations. The floor was covered in sequins. Harry had pom-poms in his hair.
Daisy showed up to check on the situation, armed with extra dinosaur jokes and baby wipes.
“Hi Harry! Hi children! What does a dinosaur say when they score a goal in football?”
“Nothing, because they’re dead,” answered a child morosely.
“Err.... close?” replied Daisy. “They say dino-SCORE!”
Harry grinned. This was a joke that could potentially work for quidditch.
He started drawing gold spots on his dino to make it more snitchy, and pondered whether broomsticks could be adapted for dinosaurs.
Daisy soon returned with another joke.
“What do you call a posh dinosaur?”
“I dunno Daisy,” responded Harry. “What do you call a posh dinosaur?”
“Dino-sir,” they said sombrely.
“Fair enough,” Harry replied. “Daisy?”
“Yeah?”
“What does making dinosaurs have to do with reading?”
“I’m so glad you asked!” said Daisy, who was used to this sort of questioning. “We’re making dinosaurs because the theme is Silly Squad Goals and I have a great list of dinosaur jokes. It also gets kids into the library, where they will see all the books, and are therefore infinitely more likely to borrow them than kids who don’t come to the library”.
“Nice!” said Harry. “How long is this list of dinosaur jokes?”
Daisy smiled a terrifying smile. “Very”.
“Hey, Harry?” said Daisy, knowingly.
“Yeah?” replied Harry, who was trying to take cute pictures of dinosaurs for the Insta.
“Why did the dinosaur get into bed?”
“TO EAT PEOPLE!” yelled a nearby child.
“Nope!” responded Daisy. “You wanna know the real reason?”
“Go for it,” said Harry, resigned to his fate.
Daisy’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “Because he was tired”.
Harry did indeed find himself giving Summer Reading Challenge prizes to some of the dino builder children. And with the prizes, he gave jokes.
“You’ve read two books? That’s awesome! What do you get if you cross a dinosaur with a flying horse?”
“A pega-saurus!”
He couldn’t quite tell if the children thought the jokes were cool, but it was rather funny either way.
As the dino day drew to a close, the phone began to ring. Daisy sighed, but decided they probably should answer it.
“Good afternoon, lil’ Whining library”
“Hi Heather! Yeah, it’s Daisy”
“Dino day has been great, yeah!”
“I absolutely will post things on social media”
“Harry did epic.”
“Oh for reals?”
“Yeah, will do! Do you wanna hear a dinosaur joke?”
“It’s a quick one! What would happen if a 100-ton dinosaur stepped on you?”
“...you’d be deeply impressed!”
“Okay, you take care too, bye bye!”
Daisy turned to Harry with a smile. “I think Heather thinks we’re cool.”
“For reals?” questioned Harry.
“For reals,” Daisy confirmed. “She wants us to Jive about it”.
“Like have a dance?” asked Harry, worriedly.
“Kinda”.
Surrey Libraries Jive Group blog post:
Little Whining Library Invaded By Dinosaurs!
by Daisy (LA) and Harry (WLA)
Today at Little Whining Library, we held a dinosaur craft event. This went well with the Silly Squad Goals SRC theme because we told a lot of dinosaur jokes.
What do you call a group of dinosaurs who sing?
...a tyranno-chorus!
[the post continued for several more paragraphs of pro-library waffle]
Harry was amazing, I was amazing, the kids were amazing, and we all had a great time and great dinosaurs.