Illustrated Harry Potter to be released in digital

Jim Kay’s illustrated edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Bloomsbury) will be available digitally through Amazon Kindle for the first time this September.

The £6.99 e-book will come complete with a moving front cover of a flying owl and smoke billowing from the Hogwarts Express.

Other highlights from the moving book, revealed today by J K Rowling's digital company Pottermore, include a multi-page spread of shopping street, Diagon Alley "which appears to live and breathe", an animated portrait of Draco Malfoy and a guide to trolls.

As well as moving images, readers can tailor their reading experience, adjusting font sizes with words "magically reflowing around the animation and images". Readers can choose to have the animations off or on while reading the book.

A Pottermore spokesperson said: “Since wizards in the Harry Potter books have moving newspapers, it’s only fair we get a bit of the wizarding reading experience too. Now, with the Kindle in Motion technology, Philosopher’s Stone’s illustrated pages delicately move in different ways.

"The edition provides never-before-seen animated enhancements of Kay's work such as the spectacle of the Sorting Ceremony and a Diagon Alley that appears to live and breathe. "

Kay's illustrated edition was published back in 2015. The illustrator has also worked on Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and most recently, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which will be published this October.

Kay told The Bookseller he had been working "flat out" on illustrating the wizarding series in 2015, two years after Bloomsbury announced it would publish illustrated editions of all seven of the novels by J K Rowling.

Kindle in Motion features can be viewed on compatible Fire tablets and the free Kindle app for iOS and Android.

The e-book will be released on 5th September in English.