Tolkien, right? (I’m not a fan, but I respect the fans.). If he had asked you to read the first pages of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast I would have been even more impressed.
Just as well he didn’t read himself “Jabberwocky.” He could have sent himself into another dimension and vanished in front of your very eyes.
When my oldest was something like nine or ten he was not doing so great in school and I had slight concerns. Then he came up from watching tv downstairs and told he just watched something he loved and that I should watch it too. “Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail, Dad. You should watch it.”
I remember, when I was a young child, asking my Dad to read me a story from a certain big book on his bookshelf. The book was the Collected Works of Shakespeare. I didn’t know that at the time; I just knew it was a big book, and must have lots of wonderful stories inside.
Dad loved Shakespeare, and did his best. It wasn’t word-for-word, of course; but Dad described the plays as they unfolded, included the quotable parts (“Fire burn and cauldron bubble” and “To be or not to be?”), and did his best to tell Shakespeare’s stories in words a six-year-old could understand. I loved it.
I still enjoy Shakespeare to this day, probably thanks to my Dad, and those long-ago story readings. Glad to hear that you’re introducing the Cub to Tolkien and literature, and I hope he grows up enjoying it as much as I enjoy Shakespeare.
Great story, NP! Get 'em hooked early, that’s the best way. I read The Hobbit to each of our sons in turn, and my wife and I read all the Harry Potter books over the years aloud to the boys, but I must confess that our middle son and I have sort of bogged down in LOTR - been a few months since we last read any of it together. We should give it another shot this summer once he’s done with school.
Spoon, we got him some Usborne books for his level, which included prose versions of Hamlet and Macbeth. He really liked them and re-read them. Not so keen on Romeo and Juliet.
My sixth grade teacher read “The Hobbit” to us, and I attribute to him my love for sci-fi and fantasy. I got the chance to tell him so at his retiement party.
I think my love for SF and Fantasy began with my second grade teacher’s reading of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. (Her Willy Wonka voice was amazing.) Also I credit my third grade teacher’s reading of The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet. (She had an equally excellent Mr. Bass voice.)
His favourites in the movie were Legolas and the ‘guy with the sword’. The Cub is a bit weak sometimes on names, but picking out the ‘guy with the sword’ in a set of movies full of sword play was actually easy: Strider/Aragorn. (Although each time I referred to Strider or Aragorn, he would say “Who?”)
Interestingly, when the Witch King Naz Gûl is facing Éowyn and says “No man can kill me”, the Cub immediately said, gleefully, “But she’s not a man!” Then Merry stabbed him in the leg and I said, “Neither is Merry”, which he found humourous.
d&r