The book blog on nytimes.com reports that in the May 11th issue of The New York Times Book Review, the Best-Sellers list will not carry a Harry Potter title for the first time in almost 10 years. Wow.

J.K. Rowling’s books, which changed children’s literature forever, also created changes in the publishing world. Harry Potter was so ubiquitous on the list at one point that the Book Review editor decided to create a separate list for children’s books so other authors could have a chance to get on the fiction list. And then a separate list was created for children’s series because the individual HP books were crowding the kids’ list.

Some friends at The CA persuaded me to read the books after the third one came out. I like to read books my kids might want to read, so I borrowed a copy of “The Sorcerer’s Stone” and jumped in. About halfway through, I became a fan. I zipped through the first three — marveling at Rowling’s creativity and the ability to weave multiple layers together – and then suffered withdrawal until the fourth came out. When a new title hit the bookstores, my family knew they’d be eating pizza and leftovers, and the house would go uncleaned, until I finished the last page.

The HP phenomenon isn’t over, though. “The Half-Blood Prince” — my favorite in the series — will likely make another showing on the Best-Sellers list when the film version comes out this fall. And there’ll be another bump when the final book is set to film in two parts a couple of years from now.

What was your favorite book? Do you think HP will be as popular with the next generation of young readers? Part of the fun was trying to figure out what happens next. Now that we know, will the interest still be there?

My daughter left her AR book at school (again) Friday so we popped into Bookstar on Saturday to buy it so she could finish it before for her test this week. I thought I’d pick up something for my son, too, while we were there. I looked through the stacks and found a lot of books that he’s already read. Then a little book at the edge of one shelf caught my eye: “The Cay.”

Memories came flooding back like a hurricane. I remember reading “The Cay” when I was in 5th grade, and then watching the film in school.  The young adult novel, the kernel of which came from a true story, is about an 11-year-old boy whose ship is attacked by the Germans during World War II. He finds himself separated from his mother and sharing a life raft with an old black man and a cat.

Phillip, who is white, has been brought up in a prejudiced household and is ugly to his fellow castaway. As they drift in the raft for a few days, Phillip loses his sight because of a head injury he suffered when the ship was torpedoed. And when the raft finally comes ashore on a small island, Phillip must learn to trust the old black man in order to survive.

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Here are a few choices to curl up with in front of the fireplace today.

For the little kids, when they come in from throwing snowballs, making snow angels and maybe building their first snowman (or snowwoman): “Dream Snow”by Eric Carle, because, you know, it’s Eric Carle… “The Snowy Day,” the beautiful, simple classic by Ezra Jack Keats, and “Snow”by Uri Shulevitz, about children wishing for snow in a city that only gets a few flakes that soon melt – but then, snow happens in a big way. Sound familiar?

For the bigger kids, and some adults (I’m still a Calvin and Hobbes fan), “Attack of the Deranged Monster Killer Snow Goons”by Bill Watterson. If I can get my son to sit down long enough to read, this is what he’ll grab. For a twist on a classic, try Eileen Kernaghan’s reworking of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen.”

For the adults: “Snow”by Orhan Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. The story blends politics and poetry in the author’s country of Turkey.  “Dr. Zhivago” by Boris Pasternak. True, it doesn’t have the word in the title, but it always reminds me of snow. (Who can forget Julie Christie dressed in fur gliding through the snow in the sleigh. And Omar Sharif. Swoon. OK, just skip the book, and rent the movie.) A little closer to home, is “Snow Falling on Cedars”by David Guterson. The story, set in Washington state, is a murder mystery/post-war/culture clash/romance, but the real draw is Guterson’s descriptive writing.

What are your favorite books to read on a cold winter’s night?

All of us should be familiar with Rosa Parks and the courageous decision she made in 1955. Her refusal to give up her seat to a white man, which led to her arrest and later to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, is a well-treaded part of the Civil Rights Movement’s history.

That familiar story is given new life in the children’s book Rosa. Written by famed poet and Virginia Tech English professor Nikki Giovanni, it takes the historic account and presents it in an easily-digested yet empowering format for young readers.

Giovanni used the flowing words of poetry and deft storytelling to bring the story to live, giving readers a sense of what’s going on inside the head of the main characters.

Here’s a sample:

As Mrs. Parks sat waiting for the police to come, she thought of all the brave men and women, boy and girls who stood tall for civil rights. She recited the 1954 Brown versus Board of Education decision, in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that separate is “inherently unequal.” She was tired of “Colored” entrances, “Colored” balconies, “Colored” drinking fountains and “Colored” taxis. She was tired of getting somewhere first and being waited on last. Tired of “separate,” and definitely tired of “not equal.”

The fourth and fifth-grade students I read this book to recently at Winchester Elementary School were big fans of this book, as were their teachers. Rosa features bold, beautiful illustrations by Bryan Collier that add dimension to the story.

Giovanni manages to tell the painful truth of our nation’s segregated past in a way children can understand and adults can appreciate.

The last lines of the book are among its most powerful:

“The integrity, the dignity, the quiet strength of Rosa Parks turned her no into a YES for change.”

Place this one on the book list for your children if you want to take a trip through history.

My kids do not share my love of reading. (I blame their engineer dad.)

It’s a chore to get them to read for even a little while, and I usually have to resort to witholding TV, video games, food, water… until they log 30 minutes. Of course, they spend at least five minutes of the 30 asking me if it’s been 30 minutes yet. (Parents all over are nodding their heads in sympathetic agreement.)

So when I saw this bookmark with a timer on it that adds up the minutes or counts them down, I had one of those why-didn’t-I-think-of-that?-I-could’ve-made-a-million-dollars moments.

It’s called Mark-My-Time bookmark and you can get them at bookstores, Target, amazon.com, etc., for under 10 bucks. It might not make them read more, but at least I won’t have to check my watch every five minutes…