"We've been selling books for 15 years, and you see some trends come and go, but we've had to double the size of our fantasy section," says Eleanor Le Fave, the manager of Toronto children's bookstore Mabel's Fables.
Across the country, the story's the same. "There's been a real interest in science fiction and fantasy for quite a few years now, ever since Harry Potter catapulted into fame, and publishers are responding to that, and there seems to be so much more being published in that genre," said Phyllis Simon, the owner of Kidsbooks, a Vancouver store specializing in children's literature.
"Now, not all of it is outstanding, as you can imagine, but children, once they get into that mindset, they really want more of that high fantasy adventure."
With sales of Harry Potter books hitting the 250 million mark -- that's eight books for every Canadian, and Rowling has only written seven in the series -- children's literature is a boom market. It's hard to blame authors and publishers for falling under the spell of fantasy literature and going to extremes to create the next bestselling series. Many didn't even blink an eye when Stroud was offered £1-million by Random House U.K. after reading the first 92 pages of The Amulet of Samarkand, or when Miramax snapped up the film rights before the book was published.
"There's absolutely an attempt to find the next Harry Potter," said Denise Anderson, the publicity and marketing manager at Scholastic Canada Ltd., one of the largest distributors of children's literature in Canada. "There's never been anything in children's publishing that has been such a phenomenon. Who wouldn't want to have the next Harry Potter?"
Most recently known for the Goosebumps series in the eighties and nineties, today Scholastic Canada's catalogue includes titles by children's lit champs Garth Nix, the creator of the hugely popular Mister Monday and The Seventh Tower series; Tamora Pierce, whose historical fantasies have captured the minds of a mostly female readership; and Cornelia Funke, a.k.a. The German J.K. Rowling. Funke's book The Thief Lord, about a group of vagabond kids in Venice who survive using magic, sold more than 250,000 copies in North America, 20,000 in Canada, since its release in Fall, 2002. Her new book Inkheart, the adventures of a father and daughter who can bring book characters to life by reading aloud, is poised to repeat that success.
How to sort through the pretenders to the wand, particularly when the books often sport deceptively similar cover art?
Most parents will recognize the latest Lemony Snicket as he continues to have unfortunate events: The Slippery Slope, the 10th volume of the planned 13-part series arrived in bookstores in August and made its inevitable climb up the children's bestseller list. Both adults and children have fallen for Philip Pullman's pleasingly sinister His Dark Materials, although his books describing the magical world of orphan Lyra Belacqua don't quite have the cult status in North America that they do in Britain, where last year the author, a former Oxford lecturer, was named writer of the year by the British Book Awards and also won the prestigious Whitbread Prize.
Of the newcomers, Jenny Nimmo's Charlie Bone series is probably the most recognizably Harry Potter in tone, following the misadventures of a young boy in a wizard school. But it's not just a pale imitation. "Jenny Nimmo is no slouch," says Simon. "She has written and published many books and won many awards, so she's not just a copycat writer by any means.
If it's just that, of course the book would fall flat -- but she has her own strengths and magic."
Another hot prospect this season is Eragon. It's the story of a young, ordinary boy (no magic powers, although, like most of today's fantasy heroes, he has missing parents) who finds a giant gemstone only to discover it's actually a dragon egg.
The back story to Eragon will probably delight children as much as the book itself since it was written by a home-schooled American teenager.
Christopher Paolini started writing the book, the first of a planned trilogy, when he was 15. He self-published it, and then a couple of years later sold it to Knopf who re-edited the work. A favourite of bookstore owners, Eragon has been selling well in the States. "It's a really amazing story," says Le Fave, "He has created a whole world. It's unbelievable. And this is just the beginning."
Aside from dark wizard Lord Voldemort, Harry Potter's biggest threat has been Artemis Fowl, a 12-year-old criminal mastermind intent on robbing the fairy world of their riches to restore the family honour, created by Irish author Eoin Colfer. Children immediately responded to the anti-hero, and have made the three Artemis tales bestsellers. After Harry Potter, they are the second most requested fantasy books at the Toronto Public library, the library with the largest circulation in North America.
Unlike Stroud or other would-be Rowlings, Colfer can't be accused of having leapt on the fantasy bandwagon. A former elementary-school teacher, he wrote his first children's book, the award-winning Benny and Omar, in 1998. His first Artemis book came in 2001, motivated in part by trying to find a way of reinventing the idea of a main character, making the villain the hero.
Colfer recognizes that the fantasy genre has exploded, but doesn't know if it's a result of the kids actually liking the literature or being seduced by the de rigueur merchandising campaigns that accompany many kids books today.
He's also hesitant about whether or not the trend will last, particularly since "everybody and their uncles are writing fantasy trilogies." Colfer himself doesn't want to be known only for writing the Artemis Fowl series, and is actually taking a break to pen a science-fiction book, The Supernaturalist.
The author will be getting further non-Fowl attention with the new release of The Wish List (originally published in Ireland in 2000).
The Wish List is about Meg Finn, a teen runaway with criminal leanings who dies after a job goes awry. To ensure a happy afterlife, she must perform a series of good deeds.
"I think it's very important not to try and grind out another Artemis book, for me. A year and a half ago, I didn't have an idea, and also I'd been working on Artemis for five years, so I thought, just to keep the standards up I would do something else which I was really all charged up about," he says. "I know I'm the Artemis guy, but what I want to do is establish myself, with The Wish List and The Supernaturalist, as somebody who can write other things too."
And it should be noted that kids are reading other things, too. The Toronto Public Library reports that nine million children's items circulated last year, up 4 per cent, and it's not just fantasy: Coming-of-age stories such as The First Stone by Don Aker and Arthur Slade's Tribes are in healthy demand.
Some booksellers, however, wonder if there may even be a wizard or goblin in the next Harry Potterish book at all. Le Fave thinks that with the soon-to-be-released Tom Cruise movie The Last Samurai, a whole generation of kids will turn to Lian Hearn's Tales of the Otori, set in feudal Japan.
And Simon points out that with the success of the summer film The Pirates of the Caribbean, wizards may be forced to walk the plank as tales of swashbucklers, such as Celia Rees's Pirates, become the next must-read books.
"The notion of piracy and pirates is very, very hot for kids right now" says Simon.
"For younger kids there was always a fascination for picture books, Pirate Diary, or any book that had 'arr' or 'shiver me timbers' in it. But for older kids, that whole sense of adventure that was a strong genre in past generations has certainly had a bit of a lift."
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