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Sure enough, I finished reading The Hobbit to my daughter again this week. My wife has moved onto reading her Charlotte's Web, but the kid brings up questions about The Hobbit constantly all the same. Why did Bilbo take the arkenstone from Thorin? Or the ring from Gollum? Why was the Dragon so curious about Bilbo's riddles instead of eating him? Why was Thorin mad at Bilbo? Why are the goblins so mean? Why did the Elf King imprison the dwarves?
Broadly she's been exposed to facets of the human condition none of the other children's books she's read have exposed her to, and it's wonderful to see her mulling over the scenarios in her head days, even weeks after we read it. It really makes me appreciate Tolkien even more as a writer. I mean, it's not the first longer form chapter book we've read her. We read her an abridged version of Wind in the Willows, The Wizard of Oz and another illustrated book called Brambly Hedge. And those have all be fine stories with good and evil, and characters with flaws. But in that simplistic way where friends broadly stay friends, characters with a flaw display that flaw in every scene, and things are just more simplistic and black and white.
I suspect I'll be reading The Hobbit for a third time soon. She's also been begging to start The Lord of the Rings, but she's almost certainly too young for that. I should probably refresh my memory about it too.
I finished reading The Illiad and loved the shit out of it. It was a slower read for me, and I tried to get through a chapter a day. I also grabbed a book about the fragments we have from the rest of the Greek Epic Cycle, but it was underwhelming. I think I want to grab some of the Greek Tragedies that derive from the epic cycle though. At some point. I'll probably read The Odyssey next.
Currently reading The Mote in God's Eye, and it's a page turner like I haven't picked up in a long while. I'm about halfway through with 200 pages left, and I expect I'll finish it this weekend. It was written by a pair of conservative authors in 1974, was nominated for all the awards, and damned if it didn't deserve them. It's a phenomenal first contact story that evolves into a mystery/intrigue thriller. Highly recommend it. I plan on getting around to the sequel some day.
how old is your daughter? Been wondering when it is time for the hobbit.
She's 5. I have no clue what is typical for The Hobbit. I know another Mottizen said he read The Hobbit to his kids around 6 I think? I might be misremembering. A friend of mine tried reading to her son when he was 4 with an illustrated version. She acts like it went great, but her husband intimated to me that it went nowhere. So there's that. Was the idea behind me buying a companion artbook through.
It was a little touch and go at first without lots of pictures on every page. We'd go weeks without reading it, and she'd just want to hear Brambly Hedge again. She did really enjoy tracing Bilbo's path and adventures along the map in the back of the book though, and was very excited to get to the dragon. Even so, that didn't always carry it. Then I got a sketch book of The Hobbit by Alan Lee, and my daughter looks through that while I read to her, and suddenly she wanted me to read more Hobbit to her morning, noon and night, and then start over as soon as we finished.
this sketchbook I assume?
Indeed.
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That was the age I read it with my mom. Although I think we'd listened to the BBC audio drama first. That was brilliant.
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