[Mithalwen]

I certainly found LOTR a slightly to big step up having read The Hobbit at 8 or 9 (after seeing 4 out of 5 episodes of the excellent BBC Jackanory production read by the wonderful Bernard Cribbins). It wasn't so much the vocabulary as I had a reading age much higher than my actual age but holding together the complex strands of the plot and coping with the bleakness of Mordor. I left the story somewhere between Kirith Ungol and Minas Tirith. A couple of years later I tried again and was hooked. I do suspect that many who read The first HP or two may need to take a similar break before Goblet of Fire which is dark and scary.

But it is not under dispute that the Hobbit is simpler than LOTR. If Tolkien had not written LOTR, the Hobbit would have remained a classic of children's literature I am sure and been beloved in memory by many but I doubt that there would be much doubt that it belonged in the children's section (though the subsection of which age group question might remain). I don't think the Narnia stories are ever put in Fantasy/Sci Fi.


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