J.K. Rowling 'fairy tales' to be sold for charity

LONDON, England (AP) -- Wizard news, Harry Potter fans: A book of fairy tales written and illustrated by J.K. Rowling is to be published for charity.

A British charity said Thursday it hopes to raise $8 million through sales of "The Tales of Beedle the Bard." Rowling co-founded The Children's High Level Group charity, which supports institutionalized children. She has signed over her royalties.

The book is a collection of five wizarding tales referred to in Rowling's Potter saga. It was initially produced in an edition of seven handwritten copies. Six were given away by Rowling as gifts, and one was bought by retailer Amazon at an auction in December for almost $4 million.

Rowling said the new edition would include her illustrations and introduction, the stories themselves and commentaries ostensibly by Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of the fictional Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, "which appear by generous permission of the Hogwarts Headmasters' Archive."

The book will be published Dec. 4 by Bloomsbury in Britain and Scholastic in the United States. Amazon also plans a leather-bound collectors' edition priced at $100.

Rowling, whose Harry Potter books have sold more than 400 million copies and been translated into 64 languages, wrote the Beedle tales after finishing "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the seventh and final work in the series last year.

She has described "The Tales of Beedle the Bard" as a distillation of the themes found in the Harry Potter books, calling it her goodbye to a world she lived in for 17 years.

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