Author JK Rowling will be publishing her brand-new children’s book online for free.
The Harry Potter author plans to release one chapter of fairy tale, The Ickabog, at a time.
The iconic writer has announced she will be publishing a chapter online every Monday through Friday, in order to help young children home from school during the lockdown period.
Rowling said she wrote the story ten years ago but kept the manuscript stashed away in a box in the attic after opting to publish her novels for adults instead.
But she has now retrieved it, done some re-writing. and, in a series of tweets on social media, outlined how she would be bringing it to the public for free.
Anyway, over the last few weeks IâÂÂve done a bit of rewriting
and IâÂÂve decided to publish the Ickabog for free online,
so children on lockdown, or even those back at school during these strange, unsettling times, can read it or have it read to them.7/13
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) May 26, 2020
Her tweets continued saying: “Opening the box was like opening a time capsule. Most of the story was handwritten, but bits had been typed up. When I put it into some kind of order (I’m not renowned for my filing skills) I had a patchwork first draft.”
“Anyway I’ve decided to publish The Ickabog for free online, so children on lockdown, or even those back at school during these strange, unsettling times, can read it or have it read to them”
Rowling then dropped the biggest and most exciting bombshell for kids saying that she needed help to illustrate the book and is calling on all budding artists to submit their drawings in order for her the publishers to consider the best ones to be published in the book.
“We’ll be publishing a chapter (or 2 or 3) every weekday, starting at 3.00pm today and ending on July 10th. You don’t need to register to access the story. You can read it for free on a new website we’ll be launching shortly. But there’s more…” she tweeted.
‘I’d like children to illustrate the book for me! I’ll be suggesting ideas for pictures as we go, but nobody should feel constrained by my ideas. Let your imaginations run wild!’
I’d like children to illustrate the book for me!
I’ll be suggesting ideas for pictures as we go, but nobody
should feel constrained by my ideas. Let your
imaginations run wild!9/13
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) May 26, 2020
Rowling stated that she would be unable to judge which illustrations go into the published versions, as this will be dictated by publishers themselves on grounds of what fits best.
She has, however, promised to share the children’s works of art on Twitter and also confirmed that all royalties from the published series will go towards helping charities in the battle against coronavirus.
To read the chapters, visit www.theickaog.com.
