By Elizabeth Willoughby on
JK Rowling hasn’t rested since finishing the Harry Potter series with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The author has hand-written and illustrated seven copies of a new book, The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a collection of wizarding fairy-tales mentioned in the final Potter book. Rowling gave six of the books as thank-you gifts, and the seventh will be auctioned to raise money for The Children’s Voice campaign run by the Children's High Level Group (CHLG).
Although one of Beedle the Bard’s stories, The Tale of the Three Brothers, is recounted in the last Potter book, the other four tales were only alluded to. Rowling had these books of never-before-told stories bound in leather with uniquely embossed silver and moon stones, and in her dedication at the front of each wrote that the proceeds of the auction will go to help institutionalized children.
In a BBC interview, Rowing stated, “I could not think of anyone with less of a voice, or more disenfranchised, than a child with mental health issues or handicapped, who has been taken from their family or given by their family to an institution and then placed in a cage. I couldn’t think of anyone more vulnerable, or anyone more in need of an articulate voice.”
JK Rowling and Emma Nicholson founded the CHLG in 2005 to “improve the well-being, health and protection of vulnerable children. The Children’s Voice wants to make life better for young people in care; across Eastern Europe and ultimately across the whole of the modern world.”
Says Rowling, “Large amounts of wealth bring a certain responsibility. If you’re any kind of human being, then once you fulfill your family’s needs, you think, well how do I do some good with this?”
The seventh Tales of Beedle the Bard book will be auctioned by Sotheby’s on December 13, and is expected to fetch up to £50,000 ($100,000).
Copyright © 2007 Look to the Stars
