Teenage kicks?

[Mithalwen]

I decided to replace my long mislaid copy of "The Hobbit" today and since it wasn't with LOTR in the Fantasy section I ventured into the Children's department and looked first in the 9-12 years section but no joy... I was astounded to find it under teenage fiction. Should have I been? I read it at 8 or 9 and didn't struggle, I just hadn't been exposed to it . I did have a much higher reading age but I still think of it as very much a children's book that comes alive when read aloud to youngish children. I really find it hard to imagine teenagers reading it other than to get up to speed on LOTR.

[Inziladun]

The Hobbit works for all ages, I think. It can be a bit grating in its childish tone at times, but just when one starts to think of it as a "children's" book, it comes out with a very mature theme like Bilbo's mercy toward Gollum, or the complex foray into morality and property rights with Bilbo's "stealing" the Arkenstone in the hopes of avoiding senseless conflict between people who ought to be friends.
It's obviously of an overall lighter tone than LOTR because the stakes are apparently not as high, but I think TH is needlessly maligned by a lot of "serious" Tolkien fans as being a subpar ME work.
In short (too late), it's at least as suitable as things like the vampire books that are so ubiquitous in the teen sections. And the moral underpinnings are a good lesson for anyone, regardless of age.

[Mithalwen]

It was not that it can't work for all ages - but that it was its "target audience" for sales purposes. Whereas it was originally aimed at rather younger children, and is essentially a fairy tale. It may be more a reflection on the decline in reading as anything else. It may be inconceivable that a younger child would have the stamina for a book running to over 300 pages in the children's edition in these days when 16 year olds don't have to read the whole book even for GCSE (so I'm told).

At the risk of sounding like Methuselah's grannie there were so few alternatives to reading for my generation as a pre-teen that you just read more and perhaps were less likely to be fazed by a longer text. Or maybe I am just getting hopelessly middle-aged and so obliged to whitter on about such things .

Oh mercifully the whole vampire thing has passed me by... too old for Twilight..to tired to keep track of True blood...

[Nerwen]

I don't think "The Hobbit" is now generally considered a teenagers' novel. It's probably just the decision of whoever stacked the shelves in that particular bookshop. Having bought plenty of books for my younger cousins in the last few years, I've found it can be a bit arbitrary what goes in the older kids' vs the "young adult" (teenager) sections. Sometimes this is no doubt the result of carelessness or even ignorance; other times there may be some logic behind it, even if we don't all agree with it.

Consider a sort of mirror-image case: a few years ago, Amazon.com was selling COH as a children's book.

(Note that most of the Downers who commented defended this decision, on grounds which I happen to think are rather missing the point.)

[Mithalwen]

I suppose so but this is a decent bookshop - the girl who served me really knew her stuff, I had treated myself to a nostalgic wallow and bought a childhood favorite and we had a bit of a chat .. but it just threw me that when I said that I was suprised that I found it in teenage she answered that it was also in adults!

But I wouldn't market COH at children...not so much for the incest but because it is so bleak....

[Bêthberry]

While many fans read TH at a pre-adolescent age, it's helpful to remember that Tolkien read the story to his sons. So I think it's that sort of children's book, meant to keep an adult's interest while reading to younger children who thrill with fairy tale and dragons. This means it's intended for children who are too young to yet read it themselves.

I'm not sure if typical reading categories these days account for books which adults read to children.

[Pitchwife]

Dear Mith, I'm afraid the mere fact that you chose this thread title and I got the allusion makes both of us hopelessly middle-aged.
And while I'm at it, I couldn't resist (with apologies to The Undertones):

Another book from the library
'bout a hobbit's treasure hunt and burglary
It's the best that I ever read
only Thorin's death made me feel so sad
I wanna read past bedtime with a flash light
get teenage kicks all thru the night

Back on topic, I first read TH in my late teens, so I've no idea how I would have reacted to it as I child... but the books I loved at, say, 10 or 12, such as the Leatherstocking tales or Karl May's Winnetou books, all had a fair amount of violence and death in them, so I don't think that would have bothered me, and most of them were well beyond 300 pages long; the precocious bookworm I was might even have been slightly annoyed by the Prof's condescending auctorial comments.
I think you have a point about the lack of alternatives to reading in our pre-teen times, compared to today's multimedia overload; but then again, I'm confident there'll always be some precocious bookworms in every generation, and JK Rowling's success seems to prove they won't be deterred by thick volumes.
So I wouldn't make too much of this. Like Nerwen says, age-grouping in bookshops (or libraries, for that matter) can be pretty arbitrary sometimes.

[Kitanna]

My mom read TH to my brother and I every summer from the time I was four and he was six. The most mature part, to me, is the Battle of Five Armies and that's not all that scary. The Hobbit obviously sets the stage for the more serious LOTR trilogy, but it's so light hearted and fun it's easy to forget the darker parts of Middle-Earth.

Then again The Hobbit could be put in the fantasy section or even in the classics section (if Anne Rice's vampire series can be put there so can Tolkien's work). It has the ability to fall in more than one section and I don't see why young adult couldn't be one of them. Perhaps the idea behind moving it to a young adult section has to do with the fact teenagers are the group most marketed to, at least here in the States they are. Moving TH into a teen section encourages reading beyond Twilight-like books and also makes money for the interested parties.

[skip spence]

Originally Posted by Pitchwife

Dear Mith, I'm afraid the mere fact that you chose this thread title and I got the allusion makes both of us hopelessly middle-aged.
And while I'm at it, I couldn't resist (with apologies to The Undertones):

Another book from the library
'bout a hobbit's treasure hunt and burglary
It's the best that I ever read
only Thorin's death made me feel so sad
I wanna read past bedtime with a flash light
get teenage kicks all thru the night

Hehe, I'm bit younger than you I suppose but still immediately thought of that tune. And what a tune, I've had many high times listening to it. My guitar was standing next to me and I just tried playing it with your words, actually. A bit of a tongue-twister, it must be said, but nice anyway!