Book Review: The Hobbit
This book really needs no review, but I forgot to include it in our family read-aloud post. I read this book aloud to First Son this year, in third grade, over the course of the entire year, fitting in a few minutes whenever we had lessons when the girls (ages six and four) were not around. It is fabulous, of course, and I think First Son enjoyed it, though he did ask repeatedly for the first half of the book when Smaug would appear. It had been so long since I read it, I wasn't sure whether it would frighten the girls which is why I chose it for the times when they were not around. I thought it would be nice for First Son, too, to have something special like that, because he was older. I don't know how interested the girls would have been, but I do not think it would have frightened them too much so I could have read this to the whole family and selected Otto of the Silver Hand for First Son alone. That's what we would have read next if we had finished The Hobbit before the end of the year.
This particular edition is wonderful. It's a hardcover with all of Tolkein's original illustrations. I bought it online from a store that was going out of business thinking I'd probably get a little mass market paperback and was floored when this beautiful book arrived. I want essentially the same thing for the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy and haven't found it yet. Let me know if you can direct me to the right editions. (I'd rather have three books than one; they'd be easier to hold.)
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein
