MuggleNet.com's What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7 (by Andy Gordon, Ben Schoen, Emerson Spartz, Gretchen Stull, Jamie Lawrence)

MuggleNet.com, a Harry Potter fan site, offers their "unauthorized predictions" on the outcome of the Harry Potter series -- who lives, who dies, who falls in love, and how the adventure will end.

Where's the question mark after the title? That's the first question prompted by this book. Never mind; these Potterphiles do know their stuff. And this is their Prior Incantatem -- pulling past books and J.K. Rowling quotes out of their wands and breaking them down one theme at a time. But like the spell, the book's magic is fleeting -- pick it up before the hype is over, or don't bother. Perhaps that's why this book didn't come from a big publishing house or get a polished treatment. The chapter headers are grainy-looking, a few typos are noticeable, and the array of fonts on the cover is a little tacky. But that's not all that important.

The nice thing here is that the authors' evidence is presented clearly -- even the stuff they don't agree with. (For example, there are still some fans out there who think Dumbledore is alive and well, so the authors humor these fans with a few clues that they could be right.) That said, for casual fans, some things will seem like they're coming from left field (like the Lily-Snape connection) -- until MuggleNet states their case. This book pushes kids to think critically about the Harry Potter books, a lesson that can be extended into everything they read. Remind kids of that when they realize there's life after the last page of Deathly Hallows.

Author: Andy Gordon, Ben Schoen, Emerson Spartz, Gretchen Stull, Jamie Lawrence
Publisher: Ulysses Press
Publication date: November 20, 2006
Number of pages: 214
Paperback price: $13.95