By Story Star correspondent Elinor Rees

Pottermore, the interactive website about the Harry Potter series, has started to add features about ‘Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,’ the second book in the series. The first chapters are now available to explore with the later chapters being added in two further instalments within the next few weeks.

The site opened to the public in April this year and allows users to find out information about characters, plots and settings that are not revealed in the books by J.K. Rowling. They also get to choose a wand, be placed in a house and compete in wizard duels.

Chief executive Charlie Redmayne said the next books would begin coming on stream in the “weeks and months” ahead. “What we’ve been working on is getting a platform and infrastructure, which can cope with this unique challenge, but that technical team is now going to be all about getting the new content pulled through. It has all been about the platform up to now, but the content comes next.”

The site was eagerly awaited by millions of fans of the books who can now delve even further in to the Harry Potter universe. The popularity of the site as well as the Harry Potter world in Florida and the films shows that J.K. Rowling’s creation truly has captured the minds of its readers and it’s refusing to let go any time soon.

The books have had the kind of following that many authors can only imagine and it’s a huge testament to Rowling’s creativity that people still want to know everything there is about her characters despite the series finishing in 2007.

This kind of appreciation is specific to books, for once, as the characters and settings are so intricate and complex that it took seven books for them to be explored and this still wasn’t enough for most fans. They had to be given thousands of pages to be developed and understood; something that only the written word would permit. Name a film or a play that still has people wanting to know the backgrounds of characters. You can’t. You may argue that films and plays have to reach a conclusion in their run time, however, and so there is no room for further exploration but books also have to reach a conclusion and yet there is still a need to know more about Harry Potter.

This kind of success is a rarity, admittedly, but it does show that books do have the potential to grow in to a piece of history that millions will adore and encourage their children to read in years to come. Pottermore embodies the appreciation that fans have for their favourite book as well as Rowling’s appreciation to her readers and if more books can achieve this level of success then it can only mean that a growing number of young people are getting lost in a really good book.