JK Rowling has announced a new story called “The Ickabog” that she has released for FREE to entertain children during the coronavirus lockdown.
Rowling started writing “The Ickabog” while she was still completing the original Wizarding World series, and intended to publish it following the seventh — and final — “Harry Potter” book.
However, she decided to step back from children’s books and left a draft of “The Ickabog” in the attic, where it remained for nearly a decade.
Rowling states ” However, after the last Potter book I wanted to take a break from publishing, which ended up lasting five years. In that time I wrote The Casual Vacancy and Robert Galbraith wrote The Cuckoo’s Calling. After some dithering (and also after my long-suffering agent had trademarked The Ickabog – sorry, Neil) I decided I wanted to step away from children’s books for a while. At that point, the first draft of The Ickabog went up into the attic, where it’s remained for nearly a decade. Over time I came to think of it as a story that belonged to my two younger children, because I’d read it to them in the evenings when they were little, which has always been a happy family memory.”
Rowling headed to Twitter to ensure her fans understood that The Ickabog is a stand alone fairy tale.
The story is to be posted in chapters every weekday between 26th May and 10th July on The Ickabog website.
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