Despite repeated statements from the muggles at publishers Bloomsbury and Scholastic — and even from JK Rowling herself — that the next Harry Potter story will be the last, one in five children refuse to believe the series will be over after the seventh book. Half the tykes who have resigned themselves to a final goodbye from the bespectacled boy wizard plan to hunt for a new series to read while one-third will re-read the Potter books and about one-quarter say they will steer clear of bookshops until Rowling writes something else.

While Harry Potter has been widely hailed as the only written temptation able to lure children away from their Sony PSPs, the new study from Yankelovich, which was released the same day as the paperback edition of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” (coincidence? hmmm), offers some of the first tangible evidence. Fifty-one percent of Harry Potter readers aged 5-17 said they didn’t read books for fun before they discovered Hogwarts and Quidditch.

What may be the report’s most distressing finding to people of, a certain, more mature age, is that 34 percent of parents say Harry Potter is a “must read” for kids and teens. Number two on the list, with only 12 percent? Dr. Seuss.