Youth Books Give Reason to Rejoice

For parents who believe they were saved by books, nothing is more heartening than seeing their children read. But as every concerned parent knows, not all children read for pleasure, especially those who excel early at spitting contests--offspring commonly known as boys.

But this summer there is reason to rejoice. Harry Potter has flown his Nimbus 2000 broom into the hearts of young male readers throughout the English-speaking world. The protagonist of a wildly popular series of fantasy books by Britain’s J.K. Rowling, Harry has done what some parents thought impossible. He has induced their 8- to 12-year-old sons to unhand their video games and go where only their minds and a good book can take them.

Girls are also reading “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” and “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” in record numbers, but girls have always been more likely to pick up a book. Charming adults as well as children, each of the first two titles in what is expected to be a series of seven has sold more than 800,000 copies, an unprecedented number for a children’s book.

What better place to talk about the Harry Potter phenomenon and how parents might capitalize on it than PAGES, Books for Children and Young Adults, in Tarzana.

PAGES is a bit like the children’s bookstore run by the Meg Ryan character in “You’ve Got Mail,” a place where people can get the kind of informed advice that is hard to come by at most big chains. Several years ago, when I was about to spend a week in Mexico with a friend and her 11- and 12-year-old sons, I had the PAGES staff collect a stack of paperbacks for the boys. The books kept them rapt for hours, allowing their mother and me to talk as we hadn’t since we were teenage best friends.

Shop owner Darlene Daniel thought the Harry Potter books would be something special even before the first was published in the United States last August. What tipped her was that the series was being edited for Scholastic Press by Arthur Levine, who has an exceptional record for bringing first-rate children’s books to public attention.

“That was a good sign,” Daniel recalls. The publisher also ensured that the book wouldn’t get lost on crowded shelves by allowing booksellers who agreed to display it prominently to delay payment until January. “Clearly, the publisher was signaling its belief in the exceptional quality of the book,” Daniel says.

Unfortunately, the publisher wasn’t as conscientious about supply. Scholastic temporarily ran out in December, just as extraordinary word of mouth had youngsters clamoring for Harry’s adventures at the Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry.

The appeal of the series (the second book came out last month and the third, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Askaban,” will appear in September) is no mystery to Daniel. “It has all the things that make a good read--characters you care about; fresh, original and intriguing plotting and a setting that you’d like to visit,” she says.

You might not expect American kids to respond to a story set in a British boarding school, but Harry’s is a school where math is de-emphasized in favor of magic and its attendant powers.

“What kids don’t want to develop controls over their environment?” Daniel asks.

Instead of a conventional family, Harry has good friends, including a fellow student named Hermione and the Weasley family. For Harry, Daniel says, this group “replaces the family support that is denied by the death of his parents and truly horrible treatment by the aunt, uncle and cousin he’s lived with for the first 10 years of his life.”

Although no other children’s book is about to topple Harry Potter, Daniel says critics and children have taken to another recent title, “Holes,” by Louis Sachar. Boys especially have embraced this harsh but surprisingly funny book (a Newbery Gold Medal winner) about a boy who is sent to a horrific youth camp after he’s found guilty of stealing a pair of athletic shoes.

“We could deconstruct any of these books and we would find that what Rowling has done and what Sachar has done is somewhat like what Judy Blume has done,” says Daniel, alluding to the author of frank, much-loved books for girls who regularly appears with Mark Twain among the most censored American writers.

“They have completely eliminated parents as a source of strength and support so the focus is entirely on the young person as he or she attempts to cope with what feels like an unjust world.”

For youngsters 10 and up who like thoughtful fantasy, PAGES also recommends “The Cure” by local writer Sonia Levitin.

In “The Cure,” set in a future world in which both stress and the most familiar pleasures have been eliminated, a boy is offered a cure for his deviant creativity and insistence on expressing emotion. Sent back in time, he becomes part of a Jewish family in Germany during the Middle Ages, just as the Black Plague is fanning anti-Semitism.

Young female readers have been enthusiastic about a Newbery Honor book by Gail Carson Levine, titled “Ella Enchanted.” Based on the Cinderella story, this is an adventure involving a magical world “without the grittiness of ‘Holes,’ ” Daniel says.

While young readers’ love of fantasy is reflected in the continuing popularity of series by Lloyd Alexander, Brian Jacques and others, Daniel says she is looking forward to the publication soon of two more realistic titles.

One is the first Ramona book by Beverly Cleary in 15 years. “It’s wonderful,” says Daniel of “Ramona’s World,” due out in August. “She’s as spirited and uninhibited as ever.”

Gail Carson Levine will also publish her first historical novel for young people. Called “Dave at Night,” it is the story of a Jewish orphan in Manhattan in 1926 whose late-night forays include visits to the salons and rent parties of Harlem. No fairy tale this time, the book is based on the real adventures of the author’s father.

Spotlight runs each Friday. Patricia Ward Biederman can be reached at valley.news@latimes.com.