People queue up to buy the new Harry Potter book 'Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince' at a bookstore in London, Saturday 16 July 2005. The book was released in bookstores around the globe simultaneously at 2301 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). EPA/DANIEL HAMBURY
London - Millions of youngster in Britain and other English- speaking countries were allowed to stay up late Friday, not to watch a movie or television show, but to be among the first to snap up a copy of the new Harry Potter book.
Sales of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ", the sixth in the series of wildly popular books about the boy wizard, got under way in Britain early Saturday as more than 1,000 bookstores across the country opened early to satisfy demand. Lines formed at many of the stores prior to midnight.
As part of the book's launch, author J.K. Rowling read a short passage from the book in a room set up as the Hogwart School of Witchcraft and Wizardry at Edinburgh Castle in Scotland. Seventy young "reporters" aged 8 to 14, won a contest to attend the event and report on the book launch for their school newspapers. They clapped enthusiastically when Rowling concluded the passage.
Even in non-English speaking countries, demand is high. Bookstores in Germany, for example, planned to offer the English-version of the book early Saturday. Amazon in Germany has had 110,000 pre- publication orders for the English version. The German translation is due out October 1.
A total of 270 million copies of the first five books have been sold around the world, and there is little doubt that the sixth will be as successful.
Some 10.8 million copies of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" are reported to have been printed in the United States alone, the largest first-edition print run ever.
Despite massive sales and hype, there are dissenting voices, including Pope Benedict XVI, who said in a letter he wrote before becoming pope that he does not like Harry Potter at all. The letter was written two years ago to Bavarian-based author Gabriele Kuby, who has written a critical evaluation of the Potter phenomenon.
"It is good that you are throwing light on Harry Potter, because these are subtle seductions that work imperceptibly, and because of that deeply, and erode Christianity in the soul before it can even grow properly," Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said.
Another critic, BBC journalist Robert Winder, said the Harry Potter books paint an unrealistic picture of Britain in 2005 and actually represent a long-forgotten Britain of the 1950s.
"Living at a boarding school, he inhabits a world of duelling practice, of house-masters, of pet rats and harmless games," Winder wrote in an opinion column posted at the BBC's website. "It is a world where good and evil are clearly defined and not one with the many grey areas and dangers familiar to children and young adults today."
Author A.S. Byatt, winner of the prestigeous Booker Prize was more scathing . She said adult Potter fans were actually "reverting to their inner child" when they read the books, which she said were "for people whose interests are confined to the worlds of soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip".
© dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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