Harry Potter y el Misterio del Principe Coming February 23

Previously we had told you that the Spanish language edition of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince would be released on February 23. Today, Scholastic and Lectorum, a division of Scholastic announced more details about the release of “Harry Potter y el Misterio del Principe.” The book will be released “simultaneously for Spanish-speakers around the world, from Tierra del Fuego in southern Chile to northern Mexico, from the United States to Spain.” JKR has also signed a special copy of this edition to be donated to the New York Public Library.

Lectorum, a division of Scholastic and the country’s largest and oldest distributor of Spanish-language titles, will release Harry Potter y el Misterio del Principe in the United States at 12:30 p.m. (EST) on Thursday, February 23, 2006. In celebration of the worldwide release, Lectorum will host an invitation only reception at Libreria Lectorum, the country’s oldest Spanish-language bookstore, located in New York City.

When the clock counts down to 12:30 p.m., Emmy award-winning Telemundo television personality and author Maria Celeste Arraras will draw back the curtain revealing the book for the very first time. Following the unveiling, there will be a special reading by Maria Celeste from the first chapter of Harry Potter y el Misterio del Principe. As part of the celebration and another “first,” Lectorum is presenting a Spanish-language edition of the book, with an author signed bookplate, to the New York Public Library. It will be part of a children’s literature collection, which includes a U.S. edition of Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix, book five in the series, signed by J.K. Rowling and donated by Scholastic.

With a print run expected to exceed over one million, the Spanish publisher Ediciones Salamandra, “will publish three different versions of the same translation, which reflect the idiomatic differences of the Spanish language in Spain, Argentina, and the rest of Latin America. “