OK. For those of you have yet to recover from Potter-itis ... enough mourning.

The upside of ADHD....

Time to move on...and I have just the pile of books sitting RIGHT HERE. Rated on a Potter scale from 1 (easy, not much technical stuff, very Harry-ish that way) to 5 (fun, but it takes some work. Hang in there...). You know you want it. Now get your library card out or your allowance and get a move on.

"The Lightning Thief" by Rick Riordan...This is the first in a series of books, in which, yes, Our Hero turns out to be a demigod with ADHD. But it turns out that ADHD is actually a real advantage to a demigod, especially when you're being stalked by all sorts of monsters from the Other World. This book just tore through the fourth grade at St. Thomas. There are others in the series now, including "The Sea of Monsters," and others. This rates a 1...easy to get into, easy to understand.

But if you are a serious magic and wizardry fan, you should check into Diane Duane's "So You Want to Be a Wizard?" series. In the first book, Nita Callahan is being chased by bullies, and hides out in the local library. There she lays her hand accidentally on a book which sounds like any boring career book the world inflicts on innocent kids...but this book jumped out at Nita. And the title is intriguing...only certain people can see what the real title is.

Nita takes the plunge, willingly taking the wizard's pledge, and finds out that becoming a wizard involves learning spells, and the motions that go with them. In Duane's world, knowing the wizarding name of a thing allows a wizard to ask that thing to do something...a gate to open, time to stand still briefly, empty fridges to switch places with a friend's full fridge(...ok, just temporarily. Nita was really, really hungry.) It's a kind of a complicated world, but if you buy into the idea, the characters Nita and her friend, Kit, are really fun. This rates a 3...a little tough going here and there...

"The Wizard's Oath...In Life's name and for Life's sake, I assert that I will employ the Art which is its gift in Life's service alone, rejecting all other usages. I will guard growth and ease pain. I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in its own way; and I will change no object or creature unless its growth and life, or that of the system of which it is part, are threatened. To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will put aside fear for courage, and death for life, when it is right to do so -- till Universe's end."

--Diane Duane "So You Want To Be A Wizard"

Tesseract-ing their way across the universe....

From years back, there is the "Wrinkle in Time" series, by Madeleine L'Engle. These books have witches, not wizards, only they're not really witches, they're...something far more eternal than that. Magic comes in the form of math and technology we can't quite follow - probably because it doesn't really exist - but the books in the series walk the boundary line between fantasy and science fiction. This rates a 4, because although the beginning is relatively easy, the philosophy and ideas can make this book more challenging...it's more for sixth and seventh grade students.

Intriguingly, L'Engle's books have been banned in some places - that alone should make you want to read them. But these books, which include "A Swiftly Tilting Planet" and "A Wind at the Door," are tougher in some respects than Riordan's books or Duane's, addressing issues that were front news at the time they were written - conformity and the nature of evil, among others.

Really great wizarding and science fiction books challenge the way you view the world, and possibly even the nature of existence. These books, especially L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time series, are not just fun.

They will rock your world.

Amy Lesemann is the reading specialist and Independent Learning Center teacher at St. Thomas the Apostle Elementary School in Ann Arbor. She teaches gifted and remedial reading and math. Explore her Web site.