The Children’s High Level Group, a charity started by JK Rowling and Baroness Emma Nicholson, has unveiled their new site and re-brand, which is now known as Lumos! Visit their official site by going to lumos.org.uk!

The Children’s High Level Group today unveils its new name and a new brand with a rallying call to put an end to the systematic institutionalisation of disadvantaged children across Central and Eastern Europe.

The charity today re-launches as Lumos – named after the spell in J K Rowling’s global sensation Harry Potter.  In the books, Lumos causes a small beam of light to emit from the spell-caster’s wand.

With the change of name to Lumos comes a shift in focus: Lumos will no longer work in Romania – this work will be continued by the Asociatia Children’s High Level Group, whose Chair is Baroness Emma Nicholson. Lumos, chaired by J K Rowling, will continue its work in the Czech Republic and the Republic of Moldova, as well as expanding into other countries.

J K Rowling says, “Twenty years ago, as Communist regimes across Europe toppled, harrowing images of Europe’s hidden children began to emerge. Thousands upon thousands of children were living in vast, depressing institutions – malnourished and often maltreated, with little access to the outside world. Slowly governments have begun to transform care systems. Real and lasting change takes time, but today we are putting down a marker and calling for significantly more progress in the next twenty years to ensure that eventually no children are living in, or at risk of entering, such institutions.”

Thanks Mugglenet!

Melissa from TLC has updated her website with another segment from her interview with JK Rowling for Harry, A History!

JKR: [re: Grindelwald] I think he was a user and a narcissist and I think someone like that would use it, would use the infatuation. I don’t think that he would reciprocate in that way, although he would be as dazzled by Dumbledore as Dumbledore was by him, because he would see in Dumbledore, ‘My God, I never knew there was someone as brilliant as me, as talented as me, as powerful as me. Together, we are unstoppable!’ So I think he would take anything from Dumbledore to have him on his side.
MA: It reminds me of WICKED, did you ever read WICKED?
JKR: No.
MA: Maguire does retellings of old fairytales and he made a very cerebral book about the Wicked Witch of the West, and Glinda, and how they used to be best friends.
JKR: Oh really…
MA: It’s very similar; she went one way to fight injustice and fight the wizard, and Glinda went the other, to be the political figure and play into the system. Really interesting.
JKR: Well, it’s the old fallen angel idea in some ways, isn’t it? It’s God and Lucifer.
MA: I wanted to ask you about that, because Grindelwald resembles – the golden curls, the first person I thought of was Lucifer.
JKR: Mm-hm. So you can call it a fraternal bond, but I think it makes it more tragic for Dumbledore. I also think it makes Dumbledore a little less culpable. I see him as fundamentally a very intellectual, brilliant and precocious person whose emotional life was absolutely subjugated to the life of the mind – by his choice – and then his first foray into the world of emotion is catastrophic and I think that would forevermore stun that part of his life and leave it stultified and he would be, what he becomes. That’s what I saw as Dumbledore’s past. That’s always what I saw was in his past. And he keeps a distance between himself and others through humour, a certain detachment and a frivolity of manner.
But he’s also isolated by his brain.  He’s isolated by the fact he knows so much, guesses so much, guesses correctly. He has to play his cards close to his chest because he doesn’t want Voldemort to know what he suspects. Terrible to be Dumbledore, really, by the end he must have thought it would be quite nice to check out and just hope that everything works out well. [Laughter.]
MA: Because he’s set up this massive chess game –
JKR: Mm, this massive chess game. But I said to Arthur, my American editor – we had an interesting conversation during the editing of seven – the moment when Harry takes Draco’s wand, Arthur said, God, that’s the moment when the ownership of the Elder wand is actually transferred? And I said, that’s right. He said, shouldn’t that be a bit more dramatic? And I said, no, not at all, the reverse. I said to Arthur, I think it really puts the elaborate, grandiose plans of Dumbledore and Voldemort in their place. That actually the history of the wizarding world hinged on two teenage boys wrestling with each other. They weren’t even using magic. It became an ugly little corner tussle for the possession of wands. And I really liked that – that very human moment, as opposed to these two wizards who were twitching strings and manipulating and implanting information and husbanding information and guarding information, you know?
Ultimately it just came down to that, a little scuffle and fistfight in the corner and pulling a wand away.
MA: It says a lot about the world at large, I think, about conflict in the world, it’s these little things –
JKR: And the difference one individual can make. Always, the difference one individual can make.

If you haven’t noticed, we have a button to Helping Haiti Heal on the top of the sidebar, if you don’t know what it is: WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?! Ha ha.  Anyways, its a fundraiser by some other Potter sites to help relieve Haiti after the earthquake.  The fundraiser, which has, according to Leaky:

raised nearly $97,000. If we get to $105,000, Partners in Health will name the three full cargo planes (full of medical supplies and other desperately needed equipment) that we have funded after three wizards we know well: Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

JK Rowling has sent a message to everyone who has donated:

To everyone who has helped raise such an incredible amount for the earthquake survivors in Haiti: THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU.

Like many others, I made a personal donation to the DEC shortly after the earthquake happened; but never did I expect such an amazing response from all of you.  You cannot imagine how awed, moved and humbled I am to know that planes named Harry, Ron and Hermione are going to be flying off to help.  I did not need this to remind me how extraordinary Harry’s fans are, but you keep giving me proofs. THANK YOU! – Jo

Donations are open until Saturday so if you haven’t donated, or even if you have, head over here to donate!

Sky News is reporting that Mattel has created a special JK Rowling Barbie doll and they have a photo of the doll.  Sadly it will not be created for mass distribution to the public.

Harry Potter author JK Rowling, tennis champion Kim Clijsters and Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria have all been given the ultimate plastic accolade: being turned into a Barbie doll.

The JK Rowling doll, meanwhile, is dressed in the black wool suit and hot pink top combination she wore at the 2009 Monsters and Critics Award Banquet.

The three one-of-a-kind Barbie dolls, which will not go on general sale, are being showcased in Mattel’s showroom at the world’s largest toy fair in Nuremberg, Germany.

Exhibitors from around the world are meeting to show off the trends that will fill this year’s Christmas stockings.

JKR has made the list of 10 Scotswomen who changed the decade put together by The Scotsman.

It is hard to think of a more powerful female figure to have emerged from Scotland in the past decade than JK Rowling. In 2000, Rowling was cementing her position as the world’s most popular children’s author with her fourth Harry Potter book, which broke all literary sales records in both the US and the UK. By 2007, Forbes magazine had ranked her the 48th most powerful celebrity in the world – not just for her enormous impact on child literacy but for her philanthropic work. Her Volant Charitable Trust funds disadvantaged children and MS research. She is a vocal president of One Parent Families, and successfully campaigned for a law change in Romania concerning caged beds for orphans. Whatever she turns her hand to, Rowling has proved she is capable of effecting real change on a global scale.

Thanks HPANA!

According to The Telegraph some Harry Potter books are in Amazon’s top selling books of the decade!  JK Rowling is also the top selling author of the decade!

Top 10 best-selling books of the decade:

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – JK Rowling

2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – JK Rowling

6. The Tales of Beedle the Bard – JK Rowling

Top 10 best-selling authors of the decade:

1. JK Rowling