The best-selling children’s book author/editor Jane Yolen was another writer “orphaned” by Delacorte after it decided to cut back its YA booklist. She was recruited by Harcourt Trade Publishers in 1994 to begin another YA line there. This line, called “Magic Carpet”, became the new home of the YW books within months of its establishment.
Harcourt’s paperback editions began with So You Want to Be a Wizard (ISBN: 0152012397) in May of 1996. Deep Wizardry was published in December of 1996 (ISBN: 0152012400), High Wizardry in March of 1997 (ISBN: 0152012419), and a small-format hardcover edition of A Wizard Abroad in September of 1997. Covers for these editions were by David Bower.
The reprint editions did so well that Harcourt then contracted with DD for the next book in the series, The Wizard’s Dilemma (ISBN 0152025510), which came out in 2001. The first four books were also repackaged in elegant new covers by the artist on the Dilemma hardcover, Cliff Nielsen, whose art appears in our website’s logo bar and in many other places on the site.
(There were also “Troll Books” book club editions of these books, which used first the David Bower and then the Cliff Nielsen covers.)
The Wizard’s Dilemma did very well in both hardcover and paperback (ISBN 0152024603), going back to press repeatedly in both editions. Harcourt then published book 6 in the series, A Wizard Alone, in 2002; book 7, Wizard’s Holiday, in October 2003, along with the 20th Anniversary hardcover of So You Want to Be a Wizard, in August 2003; and book 8, Wizards at War, in October 2005. The ninth book, A Wizard of Mars, was published in April 2010. Book 10, Games Wizards Play, will be published on February 2, 2016. Books 11 and 12 are in the planning stages.
The only editions that remain to be mentioned are the new digest editions of the first six books, with covers by Greg Swearingen. So You Want to Be a Wizard, Deep Wizardry, and High Wizardry came out first, in 2002-2003, followed by digest editions of A Wizard Abroad, The Wizard’s Dilemma and A Wizard Alone, published along with Wizards at War, in October 2005.
