It was a children�s tea party with a very special guest of honour. JK Rowling yesterday joined 200 primary school children in Edinburgh to launch her latest book.

It was a children's tea party with a very special guest of honour.

JK Rowling yesterday joined 200 primary school children in Edinburgh to launch her latest book - and told the youngsters that it was demand from fans which led her to publish The Tales of Beedle the Bard.

Millions of copies of the book went on sale to raise funds for Children's High Level Group, a charity co-founded by Rowling to help vulnerable children across Eastern Europe, and retailers are already predicting the tales to top bestseller lists for Christmas, and possibly even the year.

The stories, which were first mentioned in the final book in the Harry Potter series, were originally produced in a limited edition of seven books, each hand-written and illustrated by Rowling herself.

She gave six of the volumes to people who helped make Harry Potter a global success, while the seventh hand-written copy was auctioned by Children's High Level Group last year and snapped up for £1.95m.

Speaking to the children at Edinburgh's Parliament Hall, the author revealed her reasons for making the book much more widely available.

"The idea actually came from you, by which I mean Harry Potter fans," she said. "There was quite a lot of high feeling from Harry Potter fans that only someone who had £2m could afford to read the book. I thought fair point', so I thought I'll publish it and then the charity can have that money too."

In the final Potter book, The Tales Of Beedle The Bard was a volume of wizarding fairy tales left to Hermione Granger by Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore. The tales played a crucial role in helping Harry to defeat Lord Voldemort.

Rowling, whose Harry Potter books have sold more than 400 million copies and been translated into 67 languages, wrote the Beedle tales after finishing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows last year. Retailers said that the tales were already flying off the shelves.

Waterstone's, which opened its flagship branch in Piccadilly, London at midnight for around 400 dedicated Harry Potter fans, said the book was expected to top the Christmas bestseller chart.

A spokesman said: "We think it is going to go straight to number one and probably stay there for Christmas. Even though it does not have Harry Potter in the title, it is still JK Rowling.

"It is in with a fighting chance of being the number one book of the year. Obviously other books have a head start but with JK Rowling the usual rules don't apply. Anything can happen."

Amazon, which bought the hand-written copy at auction, is selling 100,000 collectors' editions for £50, as well as the standard edition. A spokesman for the online retailer said sales of both editions had been "very strong".

"We expect it to be under a lot of Christmas trees this year," a spokesman said.

In Edinburgh, Rowling read a passage from the tales to her young audience, all of whom were from local schools.

The children also were given a free copy of the book.

During a question-and-answer session, the writer spoke about her favourite authors as a child and her love of Christmas. She told the children that story-writing was her forte at school, while chemistry was her least favourite subject.

She also revealed that she has had a fear of spiders ever since she was young. R owling told the crowd: "What's funny is, as you probably know if you've read Harry Potter, I gave Ron that fear.

"He's terrified of spiders, and Rupert Grint, who plays Ron in the films, is absolutely petrified of spiders. I feel so sorry for him because I kept putting Ron in these situations where he had to encounter them."

It is hoped that sales of The Tales of Beedle the Bard will raise millions of pounds for Children's High Level Group, the charity co-founded by Rowling and Emma Nicholson MEP.

"We started this charity because there are a lot of children, and I mean hundreds of thousands of children, shut up in institutions," said Rowling.

She found out about the plight of the youngsters from a newspaper article on the issue about five years ago.

Morality tales that make a magical addition
Review: It is the latest addition to the Harry Potter canon and was eagerly anticipated by fans across the world, even without the boy wizard featuring in its pages.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard was familiar to JK Rowling's readers because it appeared in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as the book that the schoolboy's friend, Hermione Granger, was bequeathed following the death of headmaster Albus Dumbledore.

One tale helped Harry figure out how to destroy his enemy, Lord Voldemort.

Now, more than a year after the final instalment of the Potter series hit the shelves, the stories have been published, with illustrations by Rowling.

In her introduction, Rowling says that the stories, purportedly written by a 15th century bard from Yorkshire, have been "bedtime reading for centuries" for young wizards and witches, comparing them to Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and other fairy tales enjoyed by readers in the Muggle, or non-magical, world.

But while those may feature wicked stepmothers and ugly sisters, Beedle's tales, which include titles such as The Wizard and the Hopping Pot and The Fountain of Fair Fortune, tell of witches and wizards tampering with dark magic.

At their heart is the moral lesson that "magic causes as much trouble as it cures".

The tales, which Rowling says have been translated from the Ancient Runes by Miss Granger, are accompanied by notes written by Professor Dumbledore which offer his own interpretations, historical context and related anecdotes.

A companion book of sorts, The Tales of Beedle the Bard is relatively short so lacks the depth of the seven Harry Potter books, but it does add details that make certain aspects of the series clearer.

Readers posting reviews online said that Dumbledore's notes are "definitely worth the read" and "the stand-out parts ... were definitely Jo's (or Dumbledore's, I guess) witty comments". Others simply said that the publication had whetted their appetite for more, with one reader saying: "I loved it. It was absolutely great. I can't wait to see what JKR will come up with next."

The Tales may merely bemuse those unfamiliar with the Potter series, but arguably, it was not created with those readers in mind.

As for the millions who have devoured every word written by Rowling, it will be a magical addition to their book shelves.