THE scenes we will witness tonight would have been inconceivable a few years ago.

Hundreds of children (and many adults) are barely able to contain their excitement as the big moment approaches, with midnight parties nation-wide, every newspaper and broadcaster is giving the event maximum coverage - like a cross between Beatlemania and a royal wedding.

All for the publication of a book. One of those things that were supposed to be pushed to extinction by television, games consoles and the Internet.

Harry Potter is single-handedly defying all the reactionaries who like to portray today's children as lazy, and mindless with the attention span of a goldfish. Yet thousands of children will spend most of this weekend reading Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix, a 766-page, picture-less, book.

They said kids are only happy in front of a screen: yet the success of the Harry Potter films has done nothing to dent the popularity of the books. Children are discovering that their imagination delivers better sound and pictures than the flashiest multiplex cinema.

Author JK Rowling has supplied a modern miracle in turning millions of children worldwide on to the power of the written word. Nevertheless, she still has her critics. This week, the usual crowd of detractors went on the attack: JK Rowling's style is pedestrian, her plots derivative, her writing the literary equivalent of fast food, with no long-term nourishing value.

Snobbish nonsense. Her literary quality cannot be judged from this close range, with the series yet to be finished. But she is a master storyteller.

North Yorkshire's own children's fantasy writer, Graham Taylor, is right when he compares her influence to Enid Blyton. In past ages, young readers devoured Blyton's every volume, from Noddy to The Famous Five, and from that experience sprang a life-long love of books.

Rowling is performing the same magic.

Updated: 11:55 Friday, June 20, 2003