Mr. Lux and I both have clear, fond memories of our introduction to this book: discovering an old copy sitting on a picnic table in a Texas playground, and starting to read with no idea what was about to happen (him) and of nightly out-loud reading after everyone was showered and in bed (me.) We have had this lovely illustrated version for several years, waiting for our eldest, now 9 years old, to pick it up and discover it. We got impatient, so I told the kids to sit down, we are reading the Hobbit. And we did.
As with many classics and IPs that have permeated pop culture consciousness so thoroughly, it is refreshing to revisit the original novel. I had forgotten just how funny old Bilbo is, how charming the turns of phrases, how many sentences are dedicated to describing the landscape and the journey. I forgot that Gandalf kind of just appears, and then disappears. I had forgotten entire sequences of their journey.
This is a book that is clearly meant for children – another thing I kind of didn’t remember – and although my seven year old struggled with specifics of the plot (especially the landscape descriptions – like, what side of the river, what part of the mountain, where are the woods again?), she had only small troubles following the plot. My nine year old had a few vocabulary words that he couldn’t quite define, but was so inspired by this whole endeavor that he dressed as Gandalf for their school’s Book Character parade. It’s a book that pays to be read aloud, with voices and asides and volume differentiations. In other words, it is an A+ read-aloud book for this year’s Read Aloud Project.
I will note that about halfway through, my daughter furrowed her brow and said, “Are there any girls in this adventure?” And my heart broke a little bit because no, there aren’t. I reassured her that girls go on lots of adventures, but that this adventure just happened to be had by the dudes. She was skeptical but content for the moment with my promise that our next read-aloud would have more girls on adventures. Tolkien, honestly, you couldn’t have made an Elvenqueen, or had Bard be Bardette? I mean, I get it but like…is that really so hard to imagine in a story about dwarves and talking crows?
Anyway, I knock off a half point for gender issues, but still give 4.5 out of 5 for the whole read aloud experience; for chapters that have natural breaks and are easy to pause to explain things to inquisitive children; for challenging, evocative vocabulary; and for the sheer amount of imagination in these pages.