As if by magic, thousands of readers will queue up on Saturday to snag a copy of the last instalment of the Harry Potter series. The British boy wizard seems to have woven a spell over the publishing world, not the least because of the books' supposed power to get kids reading and keep them engaged into their teen and adult years.
With a record-breaking, 12-million-copy first run, US publisher Scholastic hopes the magic will hold, despite long-standing trends that show teens in the United States still read less often for enjoyment than younger children.
In statistics gathered in a national reading test, 43 per cent of fourth graders said they read for fun nearly every day, compared with 19 per cent of eight graders and 18 per cent of 12th graders. Those numbers have not changed dramatically for years, despite the release of the popular novels.
But the statistics and hype over Harry show just part of the story - teens looking to curl up with a good book have a broader selection than ever before. Sales of juvenile hardbound books grew nearly 6 per cent from 2002 to 2006, compared to 3.7 per cent in the adult market, according to an analysis by the American Association of Publishers.
Though the juvenile category runs the gamut from picture books for toddlers to sophisticated fare for older teens, booksellers, librarians and publishers say more and more of the selection is aimed at a huge teenage demographic.
"People look at Harry Potter as a book that ushered in a new golden age of literature for teenagers," Paula Brehm-Heeger, president of the Young Adult Library Services Association and a librarian in Cincinnati, Ohio, said in a phone interview. She notes that the number of books aimed at 12 to 18-year-olds have increased 23 per cent since 1999.
The Potter phenomenon has shown kids they can read complex, long books - the seventh volume weighs in at 784 pages - and publishers and authors have taken note, Francie Alexander, chief academic officer at Scholastic, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Author JK Rowling does not dumb her stories down for kids, showing them "with effort you can be successful" in ploughing through a complex book and in other areas, she said.
She also points to a study commissioned by the books' US publisher that says 51 per cent of its readers did not read for fun before discovering Harry Potter. And though the novels have been spun off into movies and other merchandise, "at its centre it's about a book," Alexander said, showing kids the appeal of characters that live between two covers.
But the magical adventures of Harry and his friends are just the tip of a body of literature that ranges from fantasy to so-called "chick lit" for girls to award-winning works on sophisticated topics. This means teenagers do not need to worry about finding their next book after they put aside Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
"Harry Potter is in good company," Holly Koelling, a librarian in Washington state and the author of two books on teen reading, said in an interview. "They will have no problem continuing that experience with the body of literature."
The surge in teen literature comes in part because the current generation of US teens is among the largest ever, as part of the so- called millenial generation, many of whom are children of Baby Boomers born in the US in the wake of World War II.
Koelling sees an upsurge in books aimed at older teens that blur the line between juvenile and adult literature and in writers for adults probing the teen market, much as the Harry Potter books have been enjoyed by both adults and children.
The series has also shown an appetite for fantasy books. Series, like those by Cornelia Funke and Tamora Pierce, abound. Getting teenagers to read amid the distractions of daily life, school and technological gadgets may be difficult, but in this busy age, the simplicity of a book may be part of the charm, Koelling said. "One benefit is to step away from all that and into a story or a piece of history," she said.