Like any holiday, Thanksgiving has its own special images. Children, eyes bright with an odd gleam, queue up in long lines for the new Harry Potter movie, then ooh for 2½ hours as special effects make real those details—wand shops, talking hats—they've mentally cataloged from reading (and rereading) J.K. Rowling's novels about the boy wizard. Their parents, minds already on Christmas, fantasize about flying broomsticks, the better to chase down Potter merchandise—Lego sets, dolls, computer games—on kids' wish lists. And, in the seclusion of any one of three mansions afforded by her reported $140 million worth, Rowling herself, eyes alight with that same odd gleam of imagination, writes the next installment.
This, at any rate, was Thanksgiving 2001, following Nov. 16's box-office-shattering opening—$100 million in four days—of the $125 million Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the first movie from the phenomenal series of children's books (100 million copies sold worldwide). If the scheduled rollout of new titles, film adaptations and products keeps up—what can top the hair detangler inspired by Harry's friend Hermione?—next year brings more of the same: Harry Potter No. 5 should be published by fall 2002, just in time for the Chamber of Secrets movie, once again starring Daniel Radcliffe, the 12-year-old chosen from among 16,000 boys. Like something conjured by the sorcerer's apprentice, the Potter franchise now multiplies without end. But Rowling, 36, has said her dream has always been to "drive children back to reading books." For that, thanks.
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