If this is a direct quote from Rayner Unwin, it supports my view more than it does yours. He obviously took the magic and adventure of the tale, but got nothing of the deeper meaning out of it.
Siiiigh. I’m not looking for a laundry list of reasons I already know to consider it a children’s book. I am asserting that it’s unfair to consider it “just” a children’s book, and in fact, I think it’s more of an adult’s book than anything else. You simply do not get the full story until you are able to comprehend the subtleties of it.
Moria was much older. 1st age old, so at least 7000 years before the Hobbit.
Thrain I founded Erebor and I believe it was he that dug up the Arkenstone. This would be only about 900 years before the Hobbit.
I think this is true, but a child can still appreciate and enjoy the book very much.
I am trying to think at age 10 what I missed. I would say, I missed the way Gandalf basically used Thorin and Company and Bilbo to eliminate a very dangerous dragon.
I understand what you mean. I happen to think that there is much more to the parable that is* The Phantom Tollbooth*, but no matter how I protest, it is solidly in the children’s camp…
I think you correct to say it is NOT just a children’s book. I have read and reread it many times. (I tend to prefer it to LOTR).
I remember reading LOTR when I was 13. I was ok with it, until after Helm’s Deep. After that, it was all jumbled and battles and chaos. I kept thinking, but the big battle is over. I didnt’ get that Helm’s Deep was just a precursor to the greater battle. I also found Frodo’s and Sam’s privations tedious at best. When I watch the movies, I tend to FF through all that. I think I actually may see LOTR as Tolkien wanted us to–as a good tale. But like all tales, I skip over the bits that don’t interest me…
I would posit that the average child under 12 would struggle with this book, if reading by her or his own self. The language is a bit complex. Tolkien never uses 3 words when 300 will do nicely. That doesn’t mean that it wasn’t intended as a children’s book at the time, or that plenty of Doper spawn can’t handle this, just that is can be verbose and tend to lose the interest of the average child when read.
I seem to remember that one of the recent Lord of the Rings movies (FOTR?) has a featurette that included someone quoting that “review” of the book. And I think that quote above was basically the entire content of the review - no more detail was given.
My first impression was that I couldn’t even tell from the “review” whether the 10-year-old actually read the book all the way through. Bilbo fought goblins and wargs? Yup, but that’s what - maybe halfway through the book? I would think that even a child reviewing the book would mention the spiders, and would definitely talk about the dragon. Not to mention any subtler themes/symbolism/etc…
By the time JRRT wrote The Hobbit, he’d already written about the Silmarils, so it wouldn’t be a prototype.
As for a “knock-off” Silmaril, I’d not call it so. The Silmarils were created items, constructed by Fëanor, and filled with the light of the two trees. Very different from the gems of the earth, which both the elves and the dwarves delighted in digging up and fiddling with to make them shinier. The Arkenstone was dug out of The Mountain by Thrain I.
The biggest similarity is that the Arkenstone did shine by its own light.
One could call it perhaps a sort of “meta-avatar” of the Silmarils. At that point in his life, JRRT never expected to get his History of Middle-Earth published, and here was an opportunity to actually get into print a story about a beautiful stone which inspired awe, love, selflessness, greed, and war.
JRRT used the opportunity presented by The Hobbit to display quite a few themes from his History.
Well… Most of the best “children’s books” have darker undersides or deeper meanings or “adult-like” themes or confrontations. Alice in Wonderland includes many death references and jokes, and arguably only lightly-covered musings about the meaning of life. Others examples might include Peter Pan, Wizard of Oz, Treasure Island, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Wind in the Willows, &c.
I think that having a serious underpining (aimed at adults) is what makes such books endure.
Geez, I know and agree that **QtM ** is the acknowledged Lore-Master of the SDMB, but were my answers not good enough for you?
Well **QtM ** already covered its relation to the Silmaril. glee: I went back and checked and it was as QtM already posted.
Yes, yes, yes. In fact quite often, neither Sauron nor Melkor needed to do anything to lead Dwarves to grief over greed and desire for treasures. They probably did almost as much to themselves as the Evil Lords did. (You know, just like humans. It seems only Elves needed constant prodding and pushing to do evil.)
> IMS, Tolkien’s son, Chris, was the first reader of his father’s work, and he wrote
> a review of the book. He stated it was appropriate for ages 9-11. Language
> and sentence structure were more complex back then. I consider it a
> children’s/YA book. I enjoy it as an adult. LOTR is YA/adult to me. YMMV.
Several people have already addressed this issue, but Christopher (not Chris, since no one ever calls him that) Tolkien was already 13 by the time The Hobbit was published. Rayner Unwin, the 10-year-old son of the publisher, Stanley Unwin, wrote that review. Stanley Unwin had given him the manuscript and asked for his opinion of it. I asked Rayner Unwin once what would have happened if he hadn’t liked it. (He spoke at an Oxonmoot, the annual get-together for members of the Tolkien Society.) Would his father have published it anyway? He said that his father trusted his judgment and probably wouldn’t have published it. Rayner thought that it wouldn’t have mattered though, since some other publisher would have eventually taken it.
In any case, the fact that a 10-year-old says that a book was suitable for children doesn’t mean that it’s not also an adult book. Indeed, it’s possible to imagine a 10-year-old reading a book that’s intended mostly for adults and declaring that it would be suitable for children (assuming that there are child-friendly parts of it). I think that what Stanley Unwin was doing was testing the book, which he had already read and liked, on a 10-year-old, since Stanley wasn’t sure that a child could comprehend the book. By getting his son’s enthusiastic approval, Stanley was assured that children would appreciate much of the book, even if they might miss some of the deeper aspects.
Just chiming in to say that my father loved Tolkien and read The Hobbit to me when I was very young. I can clearly remember my father’s voice reading the opening passages. I couldn’t have been older than 7. It is a cherished memory, and I too have loved Tolkien ever since.
