JK Rowling, writer of the series of books about Harry Potter, has announced that she will re-publish a leather-bound book of wizard fairytales for charity and donate an expected $8m to her charity for vulnerable children.

An ancient book about a bard called Beedle comes into the plot of 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows', Ms Rowling's seventh and last about the teenage wizard. When she had finished writing the last book, she decided to put together a real version of 'The Tales of Beedle the Bard'.

She made seven copies in all, each hand-written and bound in Moroccan leather with silver mounts. She gave six to friends who had helped her complete her ten years' work on the Harry Potter series and put the last copy up for auction through Sotheby's in London. It fetched $3.98 million.

A new set of copies will be published on 4 December by major publishers Bloomsbury and Scholastic. Online book site Amazon has said it will produce up to 100,000 collector's editions, replicating the look of the originals as much as it can, and sell them for the charity for $100 each.

The proceeds of the book will go to the Children's High Level Group, a charity Ms Rowling founded in 2005 to help the one million children in Europe still living in large residential institutions.