the percentage of youngsters who read for fun continues to drop significantly as children get older, at almost exactly the same rate as before Harry Potter came along.

researchers and educators say that the series, in the end, has not permanently tempted children to put down their Game Boys and curl up with a book instead.

statistics from federal and private sources that consistently show that children read less as they age.

The trouble is that one Harry Potter novel every few years is not enough to reverse the decline in reading.

kids who said they read for fun almost every day dropped from 43 percent in fourth grade to 19 percent in eighth grade in 1998, the year “Sorcerer’s Stone” was published in the United States. In 2005, when “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” the sixth book, was published, the results were identical.