Scholastic, the global children's publishing, education and media company, and U.S. publisher of the Harry Potter series, today announced that J.K. Rowling will be coming to America in October for the "J.K. Rowling Open Book Tour." The Tour will include four events, three to be held for schoolchildren in Los Angeles, New Orleans and New York City and one event in New York City for any U.S. Harry Potter fan lucky enough to win a ticket through a sweepstakes to be held by Scholastic. At each event, Rowling will read from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final book in the Harry Potter series, answer questions about the entire series, and sign copies of her latest book.
"What J.K. Rowling loves most is to talk with her readers, and that is what she will be able to do on this very special U.S. tour," said Lisa Holton, President, Scholastic Trade and Book Fairs. "Almost three months after the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Rowling will engage in lively conversations with her fans in each of the three cities she will visit, seeking to once again experience touring the way it all began ten years ago and the way she most enjoys ... with a book, an author, and her readers."
J.K. Rowling will appear at the Los Angeles Kodak Theater on Monday, October 15th; in New Orleans at the Ernest N. Morial Auditorium at the Convention Center on Thursday, October 18th; and at New York's Carnegie Hall on Friday, October 19th. In September, at the beginning of the 2007/2008 school year, Scholastic will select schools in each of the three cities to send students to the events. Each selected school will then be given a Sorting Hat to place in their school where they will have their own random drawing of students and classes to attend the events.
In addition to these three events for schoolchildren, Rowling will do an event on the evening of October 19, 2007 in New York City open to fans of all ages. One thousand lucky fans will be selected in a sweepstakes and will receive a pair of tickets to the J.K. Rowling event at Carnegie Hall on Friday October 19 at 7 p.m.
Scholastic will launch the J.K. Rowling and the Open Book Tour Sweepstakes on July 30, 2007. Visit http://www.scholastic.com/harrypotter beginning July 30 for information on how to enter and complete rules.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling's sixth Harry Potter book, was released on July 16, 2005, and was the fastest-selling book in history selling 6.9 copies in the first 24 hours. All six Harry Potter books, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, as well as Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince have been number one bestsellers in the United States, Britain, and around the world. Scholastic is printing an unprecedented 12 million copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows which will be released at 12:01 a.m. on July 21, 2007. The American editions of the Harry Potter books are published under Scholastic's Arthur A. Levine imprint.
