Win an invite to tea with JK Rowling

IT'S a dream invitation for millions of Harry Potter fans around the world.

For the boy wizard's creator, JK Rowling, will host a tea party for city school children to celebrate the launch of her latest book, The Tales of Beedle the Bard.

She will be entertaining them with extracts from the book at the National Library of Scotland on Thursday, December 4.

Ten local schools will be asked to bring 20 pupils, aged between eight and 11, to the party.

And members of the public will be able to win tickets for their school through a ballot held by the Evening News next month.

The library has also borrowed one of seven original handcrafted copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard to go on display for a month. Ms Rowling gave the copy to her first editor, Barry Cunningham, as a gift last year.

The seventh copy was sold at a charity auction for £1.95 million, becoming the most expensive modern book sold at auction.

All royalties from the new book will go to the Children's High Level Group, the charity founded by the author, along with Emma Nicholson MEP, which works with vulnerable children across eastern Europe.

Ms Rowling wrote the book of fairy tales after completing the seventh and final Harry Potter instalment.

She said: "I hope that The Tales of Beedle the Bard will not only be a welcome present to Harry Potter fans, but an opportunity to give these abandoned children a voice.

"It will encourage young people across the world to think about those who are less fortunate and help change many young lives for the better.

"Hundreds of thousands of vulnerable children in eastern Europe are living in appalling conditions in large residential institutions.

"The charity is publishing The Tales of Beedle the Bard to raise money to fund our work in helping these children out of institutions and into loving families or community care homes."

The book is already known to fans as the volume of fairy tales in the seventh and final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It contains vital clues to the wizard's mission, but only one of the five stories is recounted in the novel itself.

Ms Nicholson said: "We're thrilled to be hosting the launch in Edinburgh, a city synonymous with JK Rowling and the world of Harry Potter, to raise awareness of the plight of young people living not so many miles away.

"We are extremely grateful to the National Library of Scotland and to Barry Cunningham for agreeing to put on a Beedle display, and would like to extend our thanks again to Bloomsbury, Scholastic, Amazon and the various foreign publishers for their support on this very special, charity publication."

The competition to win tickets will begin in the Evening News on Wednesday, November 5.