Harry Potter and the Future of Reading

In the thirty-eighth anniversary of the first manned moon landing, just as the wild celebrations of Robert A. Heinlein’s centennial were beginning to quiet down, I found myself sitting on a sidewalk in New York City, awaiting the release of J.K. Rowling’s seventh Harry Potter novel. I was there for two reasons: one because I’m a mother who wanted to see the book reach the waiting hands of her thirteen-year-old as close to the stroke of midnight as possible, the other because I’m a fiction editor who had to witness first hand this astonishing reception for a book.