J.K. Rowling announces new book 'The Ickabog' for young readers written over a decade ago

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has announced the release of her new children’s book, The Ickabog. It marks her first novel aimed towards younger readers but unlike the fantasy fiction of the Harry Potter series, the story doesn’t take place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

The first two chapters of the fairytale The Ickabog are available online for free, with daily instalments being released between May 26 and July 10. While the full book will be available in November, the chapters have been released to help entertain children and families stuck at home during the coronavirus pandemic. Read the chapters here.

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As per reports, Rowling started writing The Ickabog while she was still working on Harry Potter more than a decade ago, but kept it only for her own children, until now. According to Rowling’s website, the book was written for children aged 7 to 9 to read to themselves, and for parents to read aloud to their children. J.K. Rowling would read the stories to her own kids at bedtime.

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Unlike her spinoff stories Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them or Quidditch Through the Ages, The Ickabog has no relation to the Harry Potter series. J.K. Rowling also revealed that thematic elements in the book are timeless just like fairytales are supposed to be. Set in an imaginary land, it is a stand-alone story “about truth and the abuse of power” for children from 7 to 9 years old and is unrelated to Rowling’s other books.

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J.K. Rowling spoke about the theme and clarified that the story is not intended to be read as a response to anything happening in the world. The ideas in the book are more than a decade old and since it was originally a bedtime story, the themes are timeless and could apply to any era or any country. She also shared an interesting anecdote revealing that her children, The Ickabog’s first two readers, helped her contain the originality of the way in which she had narrated the story to them when they were kids.

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