J.K. Rowling Is Publishing Her New Children’s Novel Free Online, One Chapter Per Day

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

J.K. Rowl­ing may be the queen of chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture, but how many of her fans have noticed she has­n’t pub­lished a book for chil­dren in near­ly thir­teen years? Today’s twen­tysome­things will recall fond­ly the sum­mer of 2007, when they descend­ed upon book­stores for their copy, or copies, of the con­clud­ing vol­ume of the Har­ry Pot­ter series. There­after Rowl­ing, no doubt eager to write for an audi­ence clos­er to her own age, put out the bleak social com­e­dy The Casu­al Vacan­cy and a series of crime thrillers under the pseu­do­nym Robert Gal­braith. Rowl­ing’s lat­est Gal­braith nov­el Trou­bled Blood is sched­uled for pub­li­ca­tion in the fall of this year, but the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of young read­ers can enjoy her new fairy tale The Ick­abog online now as she seri­al­izes it for free over the next two months.

“The idea for The Ick­abog came to me while I was still writ­ing Har­ry Pot­ter,” says Rowl­ing in an intro­duc­to­ry post on her own web site. Hav­ing writ­ten “most of a first draft in fits and starts between Pot­ter books,” she end­ed up shelv­ing it 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.”

The unfin­ished man­u­script came back to mind more recent­ly as a pos­si­ble enter­tain­ment for chil­dren in coro­n­avirus lock­down all over the world. “As I worked to fin­ish the book, I start­ed read­ing chap­ters night­ly to the fam­i­ly again. This was one of the most extra­or­di­nary expe­ri­ences of my writ­ing life.”

With the work now com­plete, Rowl­ing will “be post­ing a chap­ter (or two, or three) every week­day between 26th May and 10th July on The Ick­abog web­site.” The first chap­ter, which is avail­able now, begins as fol­lows:

Once upon a time, there was a tiny coun­try called Cor­nu­copia, which had been ruled for cen­turies by a long line of fair-haired kings. The king at the time of which I write was called King Fred the Fear­less. He’d announced the ‘Fear­less’ bit him­self, on the morn­ing of his coro­na­tion, part­ly because it sound­ed nice with ‘Fred’, but also because he’d once man­aged to catch and kill a wasp all by him­self, if you didn’t count five foot­men and the boot boy.

This prose will feel famil­iar to par­ents who grew up read­ing Har­ry Pot­ter them­selves, and who will sure­ly be pleased to see Rowl­ing’s sig­na­ture sense of humo(u)r still in effect. These par­ents can read The Ick­abog’s week­ly install­ments to their own chil­dren, as well as encour­age those artis­ti­cal­ly inclined to con­tribute their own visu­als to the sto­ry by par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Ick­abog illus­tra­tion com­pe­ti­tion. “Cre­ativ­i­ty, inven­tive­ness and effort are the most impor­tant things,” Rowl­ing notes. “We aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly look­ing for the most tech­ni­cal skill!” She also empha­sizes, as regards the sto­ry itself, that though its themes include “truth and the abuse of pow­er,” it “isn’t intend­ed to be read as a response to any­thing that’s hap­pen­ing in the world right now.” Many fac­tors have con­tributed to Rowl­ing’s great suc­cess, but her pref­er­ence for the time­less over the top­i­cal sure­ly isn’t a minor one. Read her sto­ry here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How J.K. Rowl­ing Plot­ted Har­ry Pot­ter with a Hand-Drawn Spread­sheet

J.K. Rowl­ing Pub­lish­es New Har­ry Pot­ter Sto­ry About the Malev­o­lent Dolores Umbridge

J.K. Rowl­ing Defends Don­ald Trump’s Right to Be “Offen­sive and Big­ot­ed”

J.K. Rowl­ing Tells Har­vard Grads Why Suc­cess Begins with Fail­ure

Clas­sic Children’s Books Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online: Revis­it Vin­tage Works from the 19th & 20th Cen­turies

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.