As a gift to kids stuck at home around the world: J.K. Rowling announced a new project on Tuesday.
Starting today, Rowling will release new chapters of a fairy tale, "The Ickabog," online for free each week day for the next seven weeks. The book will then come out in hard copies in the fall.
The BBC notes that the project is Rowling's first non-Harry Potter children's book.
In addition to reading along online, children are also encouraged to illustrate “The Ickabog” and submit their artwork to be considered to be printed in the book.
On her website, Rowling said she wrote the story years ago and had intended on releasing it.
"The idea for The Ickabog came to me while I was still writing Harry Potter. I wrote most of a first draft in fits and starts between Potter books, intending to publish it after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," Rowling wrote on her website.
However, it wasn’t until the coronavirus outbreak that Rowling decided to revisit the story and eventually make it available for kids who are stuck at home right now.
"A few weeks ago at dinner, I tentatively mooted the idea of getting The Ickabog down from the attic and publishing it for free, for children in lockdown," she wrote. "My now teenagers were touchingly enthusiastic, so downstairs came the very dusty box, and for the last few weeks I've been immersed in a fictional world I thought I'd never enter again."
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