HOL

We all love to take an extended tour around our favourite fictional worlds, maybe stopping for tea with Sherlock Holmes, shopping at Diagon Alley and finishing the day with a game of croquet courtesy of the Queen of Hearts. But what if we had to carry some kind of a travel document (a page turner’s passport, so to speak) that showed who we are and where we’d been?

This month, we’d like you to come up with a design that officials in a fictional world might stamp into your passport when you got there. Things that you should include are your point of arrival (e.g. Rabbit Hole, Wonderland), your mode of transport (e.g. flying horse) and the date you arrived. You should also consider the colour of ink used and the shape of the stamp (many are rectangular but circular and triangular ones exist). You can also add any other details you like to make sure they represent your world of choice.

Your work needs to be original: taking something off the internet and claiming it as your own is plagiarism. Remember to keep everything HOL appropriate, adhering to all HOL rules, and please keep your submissions 600x600 pixels or smaller. Please also include a short description of your image.

You'll earn 20 beans for completing this prompt as well as it counting towards the chance to snag our shiny Ink Splatters Award.

There is no deadline as such for these prompts but if you’d like it to count towards your chance of earning the award for a specific year, we’ll need it by the end of that school year. If you’re comfortable sharing, then post below. If not, email your image and description to us via hol.bookclub @ gmail.com (without the spaces).

Here we have a stamp for District Eleven of Panem, featured in The Hunger Games. It is around and the base is orange. In the middle of the stamp, there is a plant that signifies agriculture part of the district. On each side of the plant, there are words 'district' and 'eleven' in old, stamp writing. Both the icon and the two words are in white. Top of those two words are the date of arrival (April 21st 2019) and the method (train). They are written in grey and in different writing to symbolize someone quickly writing the information down.

I picked Galazon, which is a city featured in A College of Magics by Caroline Stevermer. I chose a green upside-down triangle for the shape, to reference the many trees in Galazon (which the protagonist frequently longs for). There are two triangles, one inner and one outer. Inside the triangle from top to bottom in a serif font, is “Galazon” (larger and in green), “By Carriage” (in white against a green trapezoid) and “Winter 1900” over two lines in green.