In September 1998, Harry Potter landed on these shores, where his storied trajectory to superstardom took flight when Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine released Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone with a 50,000-copy first print run. Two decades later, the series’s U.S. sales have soared to more than 180 million copies, and worldwide sales (in 200-plus territories and 80 languages) have topped 500 million.
To commemorate the milestone, Scholastic/Levine is publishing 20th anniversary paperback editions of J.K. Rowling’s seven-book series, featuring new cover art by Caldecott Medalist Brian Selznick. Depicting standalone scenes, the covers, when lined up side by side, create a single, detail-rich panorama chronicling the young wizard’s life. Visitors to Scholastic’s booth (1538) will be treated to an early peek at the cover art for the books, due out in June; a boxed set will follow in September.
Did Selznick find the prospect of creating a fresh look for the beloved series daunting? “It was terrifying,” he acknowledges. “Mary GrandPré’s original American covers are so recognizable, and Kazu Kibuishi’s editions reimagined the world completely and beautifully, while in between those two we had all of the brilliantly designed Harry Potter movies.”
Selznick’s affection for Rowling’s series came to his rescue. “Luckily, I was a fan of the books and loved the characters deeply,” he says. “Once I realized I just needed to offer my own personal vision, I calmed down a bit. All of us who are fans have our individual relationships to the Harry Potter world, and [these images] just happen to represent mine.”
Selznick is pleased to introduce his cover art to booksellers, with whom he feels a personal connection: “I started my career as a bookseller here in New York, at Eeyore’s Books for Children, and I know how much the Harry Potter books mean to independent bookstores everywhere. I love going to BookExpo, because it always feels like going home, and I’m happy to be going home this time with Harry Potter as my date.”
Also eagerly celebrating the new anniversary editions is editor Levine, who was given a set of galleys for Rowling’s debut novel by Bloomsbury U.K. rights director Ruth Logan at the 1997 Bologna Book Fair, the first he’d attended since launching his imprint the previous fall.
Not yet published in the U.K., the book was unknown to Levine, who read it on the plane ride home and knew immediately that it aligned perfectly with his editorial wish list: “It had the sense of being a book of enduring quality, a book for the ages, not just for now. It was the work of a writer with an extremely rare combination of gifts for humor, pathos, plotting, a deep understanding of friendship and love and the things that make us vulnerable—and of course, an imagination as broad and full and generous as is humanly possible. Maybe more so.”
Years later, Levine had a similarly intuitive hunch that Selznick was the ideal artist to put a face on Harry Potter’s new incarnation. “I have always thought Brian was a genius—that overused word, which in this case is not hyperbole,” he says. “What Brian has, along with his incredible technical talent and deep emotional connection to his subjects, is a truly grand, cinematic, and theatrical vision. Sound like a match for a certain Edinburgh-based author?”
