JK Rowling read the unfinished manuscript for the fourth Harry Potter book over the phone for an American girl who was dying of cancer.
Rowling e-mailed Catie back with some tantalizing snippets from her fourth book — "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" — and then phoned her in Albany, New York to read extracts.
"Catie's face just lit up," her mother recalled.
After the child's death, Rowling e-mailed her parents to say: "I consider myself privileged to have had contact with Catie…I am crying so hard as I type. She left footprints on my heart."
That really is a menschy thing to have done, and nevermind any cheap-shots about Rowlings's fans dying for a sequel.