I first read LotR when I was 7 or 8 years old. I remember spending a whole summer slowly on it and enjoying it tremendously even though the poor book got quite torn by me carrying it everywhere and I fell asleep on the book while reading thh chapter The Great River.
My LotR enthusiasm started earlier though. My dad *cough
Nogrodcough* showed me and my sister *cough
ALittleGreencough* the Bakshi cartoon and read the books to us too (first TH, the LotR, then Sil and then even the UT). It had a huge impact on me and I was basically half living in Middle-Earth the rest of my childhood (and admittedly even now
).
Anyway, although most of my memory is blurred, I remember some highlight s from dad reading the stuff, like getting incredibly angry when he stopped reading in the middle of the Voice of Saruman (I started shouting and crying and threatened to finish reading the chapter on my own if he doesn't read it and in the end he and mom gave up and we got the rest of the story
) and my little sister got scared and wanted dad to stop reading more or less exactly at the point when Frodo speculates that a kid would ask his/her daddy to close the book.
Ah, happy memories!