After Harry Potter

Four Fantasies to Keep Your Kids Reading

by
KB Shaw

On July 21, 2007, Harry and the Deathly Hallows will be released, marking the end of a ten-year, seven-book publishing phenomenon. J K Rowling's blend of fantasy and believable characters got a lot of children-and adults-reading again. The question is, will Potter fans, particularly young boys, keep reading after the boy wizard fulfills his destiny?

With the wealth of great new fantasy titles on your local bookstore's shelves, the answer to this question should be a resounding "yes." Here are four notable fantasy series that will keep boys and girls reading well beyond Harry Potter. Each has a new volume coming out sometime this year.

#4
Children of the Red King
by Jenny Nimmo
(Orchard Press)

When you visit the bookstore, just ask for the "Charlie Bone" books. This handsomely packaged and affordable series began with Midnight for Charlie Bone. The series follows the adventures of a young boy, Charlie Bone, with an unusual power: he can jump into pictures. When his power begins to manifest itself Charlie is thrust into a world he didn't know existed and he begins to discover the dark secrets of his family history. The sixth book of the series, Charlie Bone and the Beast, is available this summer (2007). This series is for readers 9 - 12.

#3
The Noble Warriors
by William Nicholson
(Harcourt)

William Nicholson is the Oscar® nominated writer of Nell, Shadowland, and Gladiator. He made his mark in children's literature with his Wind on Fire trilogy (Hyperion). Seeker, the first book of this new series, was published last year. The second book, Jango, is available this summer. The Noble Warriors is in the tradition of high fantasy. In Seeker, Williamson brings together an unlikely trio, all of whom want to become an elite Nomana, or Noble Warrior, for their own reasons. There's Seeker, the brother of a disgraced Noble Warrior, Morning Star, whose mother left her husband and child to become a Nomana, and Wildman, who covets the power of the Nomana. Williamson has constructed a complex and richly imagined world, populated with well-defined characters. This should be fertile ground to cultivate an exciting tale for young adult and adult readers.

#2
Percy Jackson and the Olympians
by Rick Riordan
(Hyperion)

We first meet Percy Jackson, the son of a mortal mother and a Greek god, in The Lightning Thief. Percy is a classical hero-in-training who happens to be a New Yorker. He's smart, proactive, and typically American. Unlike a certain young wizard, Percy is attentive to his studies and listens to his mentors. If he didn't, he'd be dead in a Mount Olympus minute. The stories are packed full of mythological monsters, godly politics, and action. Riordan has created a series that can be enjoyed by readers 12 to adult. The third book, The Titan's Curse, was released in May, 2007. The Lightning Thief is being made into a motion picture with Chris Columbus (Harry Potter, Home Alone) at the helm.

#1
The Underland Chronicles
by Suzanne Collins
(Scholastic Press)

The Gregor books nudge out Percy Jackson for the top spot because the series explores the conflicted emotions of its protagonist who is caught up in an intricate web of prohecy, betrayal and deceit. This urban fantasy begins in Gregor the Overlander, when young Gregor and his toddler sister, Boots, fall through a ventilation shaft in the laundry room of their New York tenement. After an Alice-through-the-rabbit-hole style fall, the duo find themselves in the turbulent underland that lies deep beneath the city.

The underland is populated with creatures that dwell in any city: mice, rats, bats, spiders, roaches. The catch is, they are all gigantic, and intelligent. But perhaps the most fearful creatures of all are humans who have dwelled in the cavernous world for hundreds of years. The series uses its fantasy action to develop a rich texture of interspecies politics and personal relationships. Gregor and the Code of Claw, the fifth, and final, book of the series was published in April, 2007. Filled with spectacular and horrific battles as well as intimate moments of emotion and introspection, Gregor and the Code of Claw is a fitting conclusion to this epic tale. The Underland Chronicles is a series that the family can enjoy reading and discussing together.

Thanks to Harry Potter, this is a golden age for children's literature. Your local bookstore is filled with enough mystery, drama, and fantasy to keeps generations of young readers, and their parents enthralled.

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