Basically, the Harry Potter series has driven a huge spike in reading for enjoyment among kids, but as the series concludes and kids get older, those rates are rapidly declining again.
If you know any kids out there who enjoyed Harry Potter and are looking for new material, I can't recommend the "His Dark Materials" series by Phillip Pullman enough. It's an amazing series that existed prior to Harry Potter and has a girl protagonist.
I'd also highly recommend the Earthsea books by Ursula K. LeGuin, or any of the wonderful books by Neil Gaiman, such as Neverwhere or Stardust. Hopefully the Stardust moving that is coming out will give Neil even more exposure and popularity, he is a fantastic writer who deserves all the success in the world. For more mature readers the Night Watch Trilogy (soon to be tetraology) series by Sergey Lukyanenko.
The best thing we can do to keep kids reading is to expose them to books that are so enjoyable they can't stop.
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What's especially disappointing is that studies show kids pick up their reading habits from their parents, and I just found some data showing that adults actually read less than kids these days. Surprised me!
On the "end of Harry Potter"--A friend was googling for suggestions on "post Potter" books, and she came up with surprisingly little. I gave her my list, and pointed her at a couple others, but I'm surprised there isn't a ton of this online. Or maybe I haven't found it yet. The best resources I found were a couple of libraries. Maybe all that will kick into gear after this final HP book comes out.
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