J.K Rowling has announced that she is releasing a free children’s book which has spent the last decade hiding in her attic.
The author of the world-famous Harry Potter series announced today that she is releasing a children’s book for free to keep kids entertained while in lockdown amid the coronavirus pandemic.
She describes it as a fairy tale “about truth and the abuse of power,” and says it was written ten years ago and does not reflect today’s politics.
The 54-year-old’s new book is called The Ickabog, set in an imaginary land which doesn’t link to any of her other lands she has created.
From this afternoon the book will be published in 34 daily instalments.
JK Rowling has announced she is publishing a stand-alone fairy tale (Image: PA)
After all the chapters have been released, it will then be turned into a book and published as an ebook and audiobook in November.
JK stated that the royalties she will earn from the book will go to projects assisting people impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, Rowling has stressed that the politics of the book are not applicable in this current time.
She stressed: “The themes are timeless and could apply to any era or any country.”
The Harry Potter author revealed the plans for her new novel “The Ickabog” on Twitter earlier today
Rowling hit headlines this week after she was critical of the UK government’s response to the Dominic Cummings crisis.
On Monday, she wrote of Cummings’ reasoning for his contentious trip to Durham: “Your wife was ill, you thought you were infectious and you’ve got a kid.
“Those circumstances are not exceptional. They’re commonplace.”
JK Rowling has made her opinions heard on the Dominic Cummings crisis (Image: @jk_rowling /Twitter)
Explaining why the book was not published until now, she said: “Over time I came to think of it as a story that belonged to my two younger children because I’d read it to them in the evenings when they were little, which has always been a happy family memory.”
But a few weeks ago, she came up with the idea of publishing the story for free for children in lockdown.
She said: “My teenage children were touchingly enthusiastic, so downstairs came the very dusty box, and for the last few weeks I’ve been immersed in a fictional world I thought I’d never enter again.
The book has been sitting in her attic for 10 years (Image: @jk_rowling/Twitter)
“As I worked to finish the book, I started reading chapters nightly to the family again. This was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my writing life, as The Ickabog’s first two readers told me what they remember from when they were tiny, and demanded the reinstatement of bits they’d particularly liked (I obeyed),” she wrote on her website.
“I think The Ickabog lends itself well to serialisation because it was written as a read-aloud book (unconsciously shaped, I think, by the way, I read it to my own children), but it’s suitable for seven to nine-year-olds to read to themselves.”
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
