In the thirty-eighth anniversary of the first manned moon landing, just as the wild celebrations of Robert A. Heinlein’s centennial were beginning to quiet down, I found myself sitting on a sidewalk in New York City, awaiting the release of J.K. Rowling’s seventh Harry Potter novel. I was there for two reasons: one because I’m a mother who wanted to see the book reach the waiting hands of her thirteen-year-old as close to the stroke of midnight as possible, the other because I’m a fiction editor who had to witness first hand this astonishing reception for a book.

I must confess that on that evening (a month ago as I write this editorial), and much to my daughter’s dismay, I had not read any of the Harry Potter books. Until that night, my closest encounter with Harry had occurred when I was impaled on J.K. Rowling’s 2001 Hugo award for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. On that occasion, I had been accepting the Hugo Award for Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s January 2000 novelette, “Millennium Babies.” A lovely librarian had accepted Jo Rowling’s best novel award. After photos were taken, we made our way off the stage, but, in the glaring lights, the librarian lost her footing and fell down the stairs bumping into me as she passed. Everyone quite rightly moved quickly to make sure that the librarian and the award were in good shape. I knew that my leg had been bruised, but it was only much later in my hotel room that I discovered I’d probably left a good bit of my DNA on that Hugo.

So on this evening in 2007, I came prepared with my protective science fiction talismans. I took up my place in line at 10:30 pm with a Ted Chiang story to read and a blanket that once belonged to Isaac Asimov to sit on. Amusing events unfolded around me, just as I’m sure they did on every bookstore line in the world that night. Close to 11:30, a beautiful young woman tried to get the attractive guy ahead of me to let her into the line. He promised her good-naturedly that he would, just as long as she asked the enormous queue of people behind us if it was okay with each of them. When she responded that she just wanted one book, he remarked that everyone there was on line for “just one book.” A cantor beside me was practicing for the next day’s service. Her children tried to persuade her to sing the prayers to the theme music of the Harry Potter movies. I was amazed when she actually got the tune and sang a few lines of Hebrew. She told me that theoretically, the prayers could be sung to anything, but that she didn’t think this particular selection would go over that well with some members of her congregation.

Close to midnight, I was joined by my daughter and one of her friends. They’d been comfortably ensconced in the bookstore rereading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Sales of the new novel began a few minutes later and, naturally, the people who’d been lined up all day were the first to be served. I watched one young man in a cloak scamper madly across Broadway waving his tome. Fortunately, there wasn’t much traffic, but I couldn’t prevent myself from screaming, “Don’t die before you read the book!” By 12:40, though, the two girls had their own copies and were on their way to a weekend of Harry Potter books and movies, interrupted briefly, at my insistence, by a party on Saturday night in honor of Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the Moon.

My daughter discovered the Harry Potter books in kindergarten. My husband read the first ones to her, but she has since listened to all the tapes and reread each book a half a dozen times. Some of her passion for Harry may have cooled, but it has been replaced by a love for many other books. When she was little, British author and editor David Langford suggested I introduce her to the fiction of Diana Wynne Jones. Her interest was not aroused when I first handed those books to her, but now that she’s discovered Ms. Jones on her own, she can’t get enough of her works. While my daughter is well read in most branches of fiction, her favorite fantasy authors include Phillip Pullman, Maria V. Snyder, Tanith Lee, Ellen Kushner, Jane Yolen, and Patricia McKillip. I’m indebted to writers like Scott Westerfeld for beginning to kindle an interest in science fiction as well.

My daughter has influenced other people, too. A few years ago, a young man returning from his job on Wall Street stopped me on the subway. He’d been a counselor at her elementary after-school program and he said, “I remember your daughter. I’m not much of a reader, but she got me started on Harry Potter. Tell her I’m still thankful for that.”

To her delight, as the summer winds down, even I have managed to read the first four books in the series. With any luck, I’ll be finished with the rest before winter. I’ll be too late to join in my husband and daughter’s fervent discussions about the true nature of Snape, but at least I’ll know what they were talking about.

There doesn’t seem to be any waning of my daughter’s or her friends’ interest in books. I know my evidence is only anecdotal, but I hope it’s an indication that dire warnings about the death of the written word have been greatly exaggerated.