"The Hobbit is only tangentially connected to the greater history of Middle Earth; it is in many ways a children's story, especially when compared with the epic mythology of The Silmarillion or the desperate wars of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien "tested" The Hobbit as he wrote it by reading it to his sons, and the manner of narration is, at times, very much like a children's story; it includes such "asides" to the audience as, "He was only a little hobbit you must remember." In fact, the original manuscript of The Hobbit included much more of this sort of language, but Tolkien later removed most of it."
---from
Sparknotes
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The musicians had indeed laid bare the youngest, most innocent of our ideas of life, the indestructible yearning for the way things aren't and can never be. ~ Philip Roth, The Human Stain