Many young readers gobbled up the print version of the new Harry Potter novel the first weekend it was out.

Must have been a disappointment: a few sittings and then, boom, you find out who dies and suddenly it’s over.

Listening to J.K. Rowling’s sixth installment, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” is quite another matter -a 19-hour experience to bask in.

The price is steep ($50 on cassette, $75 on CD from Random House). And as the print reviewers have said, this isn’t the best of the series. But it’s still worth every penny, every minute.

While the eye can speed, the ear cannot, which stretches the experience. Better still, the narrator is Jim Dale, who has transformed the silence into a raucous and vivid performance.

Before “Harry,” Dale was perhaps best known as a singer, a Shakespearean and Broadway actor, and the guy who wrote the lyrics to “Georgy Girl.”

After an editor saw him in “Travels With My Aunt,” an Off-Broadway show that required him to portray a variety of characters, he was chosen to narrate the first Harry Potter book.

It had 45 different characters, and Dale based them on people he has actually known or heard.

That’s got to be why his narrations are so compelling. The genius of Jim Dale is that he can go wild with voices that are raspy, squeaky, snarly, snide, kind, wifty – and it’s believable. The risk is that it might sound cartoonish, but it doesn’t.

Among various awards for Dale’s “Harry” narrations, he set a Guinness record for most character voices in an audio book, creating 134 voices for “Order of the Phoenix.”

Dale insists he’s not out of voices yet. In fact, “Half-Blood Prince” has 40 new voices, according to the publisher. But except for the new Hogwarts potions teacher who makes his entrance disguised as an overstuffed armchair, most are minor characters.

In total, the six Harry Potter recordings so far amount to a glorious 95 hours.

While still no competition for the print version, “Half-Blood Prince” sold 165,000 copies the first two days – the largest two-day sale in audio-book history, according to Random House. Tallying the whole series, “Harry” fans have bought more than 5 million audio versions.

Dale reads with a clear affection for the characters and a delightful sense of whimsy. He has said the recordings are a legacy he wants to leave his grandchildren, but surely they will be much more than that.

These will be recordings for the ages, and people still will be listening long after the cassette and the CD have given way to some new device.