Tolkien Is Officially Good For Boys!
 

Finally a Tolkien book, The Hobbit, makes it onto a Government recommended reading list! This is from the scheme where all schools with at least 20 biys aged 11-14 will get a set of 20 books for free from a long and interesting list. Not only is The Hobbit one of these but there are loads of fantasy and sci-fi choices including Pratchett and Gaiman. Plus, the graphic novel version of The Hobbit will be available!

Boys Into Books

Quite pleasing that The Hobbit is not on a 'compulsory' list and will be one of many books freely available for leisure reading.

And I thought that fantasy books like Tolkien or Rowling's books were not allowed because of the whole magic and pagan stuff...
Good thing though, who knows who'll became a fan due to this program. :)

Oh only let's hope they don't make them compulsory... this would cause thousands of innocent schoolchildren to hate them... or at least this is my experience on how it works...

However, I remember that some years ago one of my friends had it compulsory to have read The Hobbit at high school... well, he knew it before, so he couldn't just have started to hate it...

The reading list is intended for British schools. We don't have neo-Nazi Evangelical book-burners in the UK; that's an American phenominon.

With regard to making The Hobbit compulsory reading or not: I own my own introduction to Tolkien to the fact that my brother's school set it for compulsory study, back in the early 1960s. My brother brought the book home, I read it and was hooked.
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