Harry's Phoenix rises this morning

By KATHERINE HOBY

The fifth book in the Harry Potter series will go on sale today. New Zealand children will be able to discover the secrets of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix from 11.01am.

The global release is timed to get British children shopping at the witching hour of 12.01am.

Author J. K. Rowling insists the plot should be kept secret.

All that is known is that the 768-page volume is a hardback and that the author was left in tears after killing off a main character.

Rowling - said to be richer than the Queen - has taken out a $100 million lawsuit against the New York Daily News, which ran excerpts from the Phoenix.

Competition between retailers has meant that despite a recommended retail price of $49.95, bookshops have not said how much they will charge, or how many copies they have.

Author Margaret Mahy will be the first in a long line of readers in Auckland hoping to break the world record for the longest reading aloud of a children's book. It is thought that Phoenix will take 27 hours to read aloud.

Tom Nicholson, a professor of education at Auckland University, said Harry Potter was a marvellous creation.

"It's got to be good if it gets kids reading," he said.

"It gets them away from what they'd be doing otherwise.

"It's great that the latest must-have is a book."

His only caution was that parents should consider the children they were buying it for.

Some children were slow readers, and others were sensitive to books with darker themes.

"Some kids are simply not going to be able to handle it," he said.

"I just don't want there to be a sense of, 'You're not a real kid unless you've read Harry'.

"But overall this is really good for literacy," said Professor Nicholson.

"It makes kids want to read more and more.

"I mean, before Harry Potter, what was there?"