A good HP story,

[Denise Rohleder]

No: HPFGUIDX 2891

(Sorry, there isn't a link to click, so I had to copy/paste the whole thing!)  I got this off the newsletter Infobeat Express.

Harry Potter profits to be shared


LONDON (AP) - J.K. Rowling, creator of Harry Potter, will share profits from her best-selling books with single mothers like herself, British media reported Wednesday. Staff members of the National Council for One Parent Families said Rowling donated a "six-figure sum" to the charity. In an article for the British tabloid The Sun, Rowling, 34, says she has vivid memories of the social stigma she faced after her marriage broke up and she moved from Portugal to Scotland with her daughter, Jessica. "When I went to claim my first week's Income Support, I felt as though there was an enormous neon arrow pointing at my head," she said. "I knew nobody was out to make me feel humiliated and worthless - though that's exactly how I felt." 

Rowling said she lived in a mouse-infested Edinburgh flat on $101-a-week state benefit. She wrote her best-selling series on notepad paper in Edinburgh cafes while sheltering herself and Jessica from the cold. She told The Sunthat the birth of her daughter was "the best day of my life." One of the worst, however, was when a health visitor brought Jessica some secondhand toys including "a grubby old teddy bear." If I'd felt humiliated before, it was nothing to how I felt when I looked at that teddy bear," she said. "It makes me sad that nobody turns a hair to see the word's 'penniless' and 'single mother' together in a sentence. People seem to accept that the two things usually go together." 



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]