Harry hits stores in June

LONDON -- More Muggles mania is expected after J.K. Rowling's publishers announced that her fifth book about wide-eyed junior wizard Harry Potter will be published in Britain, the United States and several other countries on June 21.\nMuch anticipated, and somewhat delayed, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" is 768 pages long, and by word count one-third longer than its predecessor, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," published in 2000.\nThat's just about all that was revealed in a joint statement Wednesday from Britain's Bloomsbury Publishers and Scholastic Children's Books in the United States. Details of Harry's latest adventure remain as secret as the whereabouts of Diagon Alley, where Harry famously buys his wizard supplies.\nBut young fans were delighted.\n"I am so excited -- it has been much too long since the last one," said 10-year-old Phillip Weekes, who heard the news as he came out of his primary school near Bishop's Stortford, 30 miles north of London. "I'll buy it as soon as it comes out."\n"Cool," said his friend, Alexandra Ball, 11. "I am dying to know what's in it."\nThe plot remains a mystery, but the publisher did reveal how the book begins: "The hottest day of the summer so far was drawing to a close and a drowsy silence lay over the large, square houses of Privet Drive. ...The only person left outside was a teenage boy who was lying flat on his back in a flowerbed outside number four."\nAnd youngsters will have a few months to ponder what Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore means when he tells Harry, some pages on, "It is time ... for me to tell you what I should have told you five years ago, Harry. Please sit down. I am going to tell you everything."\nRowling's books have served as rebuttals to those who predict the death of reading. Kids anticipate a new Potter the way teenagers once hurried out to buy Beatles records.\nFans have pestered book sellers and obsessed on Web sites about the next installment. Hunger for news about Potter V drove an American collector to pay more than $45,000 last month for a card full of clues about the plot that contained 93 words, including "Ron," "broom" and "sacked."\nKids aren't alone in celebrating Wednesday's news. Publishers, too, are elated. The industry endured its slowest holiday season in years, with many complaining about the lack of a "must-have" book to get shoppers in stores. Few books are more "must-have" than a Harry Potter story.\n"It's an emotional lift, something to drive business and put books back in the news," said Carl Lennertz, publisher and program director of BookSense, a national marketing campaign for independent bookstores in the United States.\nSome fans may have to squint through the "Order of Phoenix." One reason for all those pages is that publishers have used a smaller type. "The last book was pretty chunky, and we wanted to prevent this one being too big," said Bloomsbury spokeswoman Rosamund de la Hey.\nWhen the book failed to make it into print last year, as expected, there was speculation that Rowling -- now one of Britain's richest women -- was suffering from writer's block. She denied it, but the book has taken far longer to complete than its predecessors, published every year from 1997.\nWith readers eager to hear about Harry's meetings with monsters and Muggles (non-magic people), and his fast-moving games of quidditch (a sort of aerial hockey played on flying broomsticks), booksellers now anticipate another bonanza. After all, fans stood in line at bookstores to be first to buy previous volumes.\n"With the amount of interest and excitement surrounding Harry Potter, we expect the interest in advance reservations to be enormous," said Lesley Miles of book chain Waterstone's. "We know Harry's fans can't wait to get a copy of the new volume." In Britain, it is possible to reserve books in advance.\nRowling's four published titles have sold an estimated 192 million copies worldwide in hard and soft cover, and the books have been published in at least 55 languages and distributed in more than 200 countries. The first two books have been adapted into hit movies.\nAP National Writer Hillel Italie contributed to this report.