Harry Potter fans, get out your red markers and circle this date on your calendar: June 21. Last Wednesday, publishers announced that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth book in the series, will arrive in stores on that date. Within hours of this news, the book went to the top of Amazon.com's best-seller list, where customers can reserve a copy.
"I am so excited," says Phillip Weekes, 10, of London, England. "It has been much too long since the last one."
When the fifth Potter book didn't arrive last summer as expected, some worried that author J.K. Rowling was having a hard time finishing Harry's next adventure. This summer, readers should set aside plenty of time for the new 768-page volume. Not only does it have more pages than the previous books, the type will be smaller.
"The last book was pretty chunky," said Rosamund de la Hey of Bloomsbury, the company that publishes the Potter books in Britain. "We wanted to prevent this one from being too big."
That's one big project down for J.K. Rowling and one to go. She and her husband, Dr. Neil Murray, are expecting a baby this spring.
HOW THE PAGES STACK UP
309 PAGES Sorcerer's Stone 1998
341 Chamber of Secrets 1999
435 Prisoner of Azkaban 1999
734 Goblet of Fire 2000
768 Order of the Phoenix 2003