SUBMITTED BY Kit-Kat

October 12, 2005 —

The book that the coming movie is based on won a fantastic award!

Scholastic announced today that J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince won Book of the Year at the first annual Quill Awards ceremony held in New York City last night. Harry Potter's competition included many adult fiction and nonfiction bestsellers for the year.

Harry Potter also won top honors in the Children's Chapter Book/Middle Grade category. The Quill Awards is the first national book awards program in which the readers, not the critics, choose the year's best books. Unable to attend the ceremony, Rowling commented in a taped message from her Edinburgh office, "I am thrilled and honored beyond words to receive the first-ever Quill Book of the Year Award. I am still not used to the idea that so many people across the world are intimately familiar with the characters who, for so long, I alone knew. Awards like this, where readers themselves vote, are therefore especially meaningful to me."

In addition to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Scholastic books Dragon Rider by bestselling author Cornelia Funke was a nominee in the Children's Chapter Book/Middle Grade category. The highly acclaimed picture book Zen Shorts by award-winning author and illustrator Jon J Muth was nominated for best illustrated children's book. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released at midnight on July 16th and sold a record-breaking 6.9 million copies in the first 24 hours. After 9 weeks, the book had sold a phenomenal 11 million copies. The sixth Harry Potter novel has been widely praised by reviewers and has been #1 on both adults' and children's bestseller lists nationwide.