September 20, 2006
JKR, One of the Top Five Innovators for Children
In a special look back, CHILD.com salutes the innovators in the fields of education, entertainment, medicine, and more who forever altered what it means to be young in America. JKR has been included on this list in the #5 position along with the likes of Walt Disney, Dr Seuss, and Steve Jobs (of Apple Computers).
Of JKR, the article states:
"Before J.K. Rowling's bespectacled boy wizard went off to study at Hogwarts, some parents feared their kids would never enjoy reading. Once Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone hit U.S. bookstores in 1998, followed by five more installments, parents found their kids couldn't get enough of Rowling's fantasy adventure novels, some longer than 600 pages. To date more than 300 million Harry Potter books have sold worldwide; they crowded The New York Times bestseller list for so long that the newspaper created a separate children's list. "The Harry Potter books not only sparked an explosion of interest in reading," says Lisa Von Drasek, the children's librarian at the Bank Street College of Education in New York City, "they inspired kids to go out and discover other great books too."
Read more Here.