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**baileycat** · 10-28-2008, 09:45 AM

Jo's updated her site with new Beedle the Bard book release news.

Quote:

Launch of 'The Tales of Beedle the Bard'

As some of you will already know, I will be helping to launch 'The Tales of Beedle the Bard' with a Beedle tea party at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh on 4th December. I'm delighted that the book will now be available to everyone, with the net proceeds of sales going to the Children's High Level Group, the charity I helped found which works with vulnerable children across Eastern Europe.

I'm afraid we did have to limit the attendance to the launch, so it will be for 8-11 year-olds from primary schools in the Edinburgh area, who will be chosen by a random ballot run by the local newspaper. Also, some tickets are available via competitions being run by Scholastic, Bloomsbury and Amazon - see their websites for details.

One of the seven original handwritten copies of 'The Tales of Beedle the Bard', kindly loaned by my first editor Barry Cunningham, will be going on show for a month at the National Library of Scotland from 5th December to 4th January 2009, so anyone visiting Edinburgh will be able to see it.

Hundreds of thousands of vulnerable children in Eastern Europe are living in appalling conditions in large, residential institutions. Contrary to popular belief, fewer than 4% of them are orphans, but are in care because they are considered disabled or their families are poor or from ethnic minorities. The Children's High Level Group is publishing 'The Tales of Beedle the Bard', in collaboration with my English language publishers Bloomsbury and Scholastic, my foreign publishers throughout the world and also the online bookseller Amazon, who are producing a Special Limited Edition version, all of them to raise money to fund our work in helping these children out of institutions and in to loving families or community care homes.

I hope that 'The Tales of Beedle the Bard' will not only be a welcome Christmas present to Harry Potter fans, but an opportunity to give these abandoned children a voice.

J.K.Rowling Official Site