December 14, 2007

In the evening I read online about how J.K. Rowling produced seven, and only seven, handwritten copies of Tales of Beedle the Bard. Fictionally, this is the book that wizard and witch children read, like Muggle children read Grimm's fairy tales. The once-fictional-now-real Beedle has seven tales, one of which is told in Deathly Hallows.

But now she's written the other six. Six copies were given away by Rowling to people who were involved in the writing of the Harry Potter books. She auctioned off the seventh, with all of the proceeds going to charity. (I don't know which charity, but Amnesty International is one of her favorites.) The buyer was Amazon.com. It's unknown at this point whether the general public--and all of Harry's rabid fans--will get to read the tales, or at least an excerpt of them.