Good news for Harry Potter fans. Even better news for Harry Potter fans with kind hearts. J. K. Rowling is to publish a new book of wizard fairy tales with charitable purposes.

“The Tales of Beedle the Bard,” a handwritten book of fairy tales that Amazon.com bought for 1.95 million pounds ($3.86 million) in December, will be published to raise about 4 million pounds for vulnerable European children.

The Children’s High Level Group, a British charity group founded by Rowling in 2005, said in a statement that the profits from the exclusive agreement with Amazon and publishers Bloomsbury and Scholastic Corp. will help the European children and teenagers growing up in “large residential institutions” to lead a normal life.

This is great news not only for the European children who will benefit from Rowling’s idea, but also for the writer’s fans, who had never hoped the book would be published.

“The Tales of Beedle the Bard” is mentioned in the seventh and final Potter book as having been left to Hermione Granger, Harry’s colleague and friend, by Professor Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of the magic school Hogwarts.

Rowling first only produced seven copies of the book, bound in brown Moroccan leather and decorated in silver and moonstones, and gave six of them to people who were closely connected to the Potter books and had stood by her in the 17 years during which she completed the Harry Potter series. The seventh copy of the book she auctioned off and it was bought by Amazon. It was the most expensive modern book sold at auction.

Rowling said she understood the disappointment of the Harry Potter fans when only one copy of the book had been offered to the public. But yesterday she was “delighted to announce that, thanks to the generous support of Bloomsbury, Scholastic and Amazon - and with the blessing of the wonderful people who own the other six original books - The Tales of Beedle the Bard will now be widely available to all Harry Potter fans.”

Bloomsbury and Scholastic are going to publish editions which include an introduction by Rowling, at the price of $12.99, while Amazon will produce about 100,000 collector’s edition copies, which will try to copy the exact look and feel of the original book. The books from the second category will be sold for $100. Amazon said it was happy it had obtained the exclusivity for the book it had bought for such a high price. A spokesman for the company said they didn’t imagine they would have the chance “to share the booksin such a unique and special format.”

"The new edition will include the Tales themselves, translated from the original runes by Hermione Granger, and with illustrations by me, but also notes by Professor Albus Dumbledore, which appear by generous permission of the Hogwarts Headmasters' Archive," Rowling said in a statement.

The news was announced to coincide with the birthdays of both Harry Potter and his creator, who turned 43 yesterday.

The Tales contains five stories: The Tale of the Three Brothers, The Fountain of Fair Fortune, The Warlock's Hairy Heart, The Wizard and the Hopping Pot and Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump. The Tale of the Three Brothers was also published in the final Potter book.