The World of Tolkien

It wasn’t the release of the movie that inspired Mr. Sneaky Pants to start reading The Hobbit,  rather, it was seeing several enticing LEGO sets based on Lord of the Rings that got him very curious to know what this whole story is about, and he knew that the story started with The Hobbit.  Although I had purchased the audiobook for a recent car trip, it turned out that we ran into some technology difficulties and never did end up listening to it in the car.  Imagine my surprise when, a few days after arriving back at home, Mr. SP walked through the dining room at breakfast with a book mark halfway through the school library’s copy of The Hobbit.

I didn’t even know he was reading the book.  I didn’t even know he knew about the book or wanted to read it.  I figured that he might go for listening to it, but it never occurred to me to have a second grader try reading about hobbits on his own, because, well, Tolkien’s books are hard to read!  There are a lot of big words and a lot description, and sometimes things move slowly.  In fact, when I was reading the books, sometimes I even skipped over some of the long, long songs.  I admit it.

But big words don’t really intimidate this boy who LOVES epic stories, and when I asked him where he was in the story, he told me (at length and in detail).  When I asked him what he liked best about the story so far, he just lighted up and exclaimed, “Oh!  I just love the songs!  Some of them are so FUNNY!”  Really?  I tried to keep my jaw off the floor.

It turns out that he wanted to check The Hobbit out during library time at school.  The librarian was a bit apprehensive that it was appropriate reading for a second grader.  Dejected, he went back to his classroom and convinced his classroom teacher to write a note telling the librarian that he was an advanced reader for the next library class.  Armed with his note, he returned, and the librarian still didn’t want to let him check out the book until she listened to him read it out loud and questioned him about it.  So he “wasted his time” reading out loud for her and she finally relented.  He was pretty miffed because he “spent all that time reading out loud and didn’t have time to check out any other books” so he only checked out one instead of 2 or 3 or whatever the limit is for second graders.

So, I showed him where our copies of Tolkien are on the bookshelf so he wouldn’t have to battle with the librarian any more.  By now he’s all the way through The Hobbit and halfway through Fellowship of the Ring.  We’re pretty sure he does do some skimming, but why stop him, right?