Teenage kicks?

[Galadriel55]

The Hobbit is written in sipler language and doesn't touch as many deep topics as LOTR does (like the Arwen Aragorn Eowyn triangle in LOTR and many others). It's easier to understand, it has less names. That might explain it a bit.

[Mithalwen]

Pitch - it is a classic... surely?
I don't have a problem about it being in different sections and for the bookseller that is certainly a good plan - it isn't so long that it was very high up in a list of books that they are always able to sell. And if you are only going to have it in one of the younger sections from a marketing point of view it is better to flatter the younger children than insult the older ones. Nevertheless I did go 9-12 and Children's classics before a last chance look in teens.



I just thought that teenagers might find it too young in tone and remembered ten year old Rayner Unwin's initial review estimating it would appeal to children of 5 to 9. Maybe it is that teenagers have been discovering the Hobbit via the Lord of the Rings (via the films?) rather than discovering LOTR via the Hobbit. I do remmeber being upset by the ponies being eaten (maybe why there are so few equine casualties in LOTR) and crying at the deaths of Thorin and Fili and Kili but in a moved rather than traumatised way.

I am probably reading to much into this but it is certain that childhood has changed both from when the Hobbit was first published, to when I first read it over forty years later and in the years since. The book hasn't changed so maybe our perceptions and ideas of what is suitable has. Certainly modern children are more sophisticated than their forties equivalents but many of the forties children would have left school at 14 and so had to grow up in that respect much quicker.

I do wonder about new generations reading the Harry Potter books .. the first is very much a children's book and the later ones are not - several times the length and much darker... I might go back and see where the bookshop has put them and if they have split the series.

[Galadriel55]

I have read Harry Potter when I was 13. I found it addictive, but not as deep as LOTR - it doesn't touch on as many topics of feelings. I know that it's based on love and everything, but it's too shallow. The word love almost lost its eaning in those books. In LOTR, though, you have a wide range of feelings, emotions, vaues, and so on that actually create the story, and it's like you are amongst the characters, and you feel everything too.
My sister in 8 and she read 5 of the Harry Potter books. She didn't fully understand any of them, and I spent lots of time retelling and explaining. She loves them. They are full of mystery and action. They are like a formulathat I need to explain to her. But LOTR is not a forula, and you have to understand yourself why this character does this, and so on. LOTR is more...mature than HP.
The point I'm trying to make is that it's harder for children to read LOTR. The Hobbit is much simpler, even though there are deep feelings and values. The Hobbit is less complicated than HP based on intigue, but more deep, real, and everything that I've mentioned above about LOTR. It's like a compromise. I think it's better for children to read TH before HP.

[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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[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

I just thought that teenagers might find it too young in tone and remembered ten year old Rayner Unwin's initial review estimating it would appeal to children of 5 to 9. Maybe it is that teenagers have been discovering the Hobbit via the Lord of the Rings (via the films?) rather than discovering LOTR via the Hobbit. I do remmeber being upset by the ponies being eaten (maybe why there are so few equine casualties in LOTR) and crying at the deaths of Thorin and Fili and Kili but in a moved rather than traumatised way.

I am probably reading to much into this but it is certain that childhood has changed both from when the Hobbit was first published, to when I first read it over forty years later and in the years since. The book hasn't changed so maybe our perceptions and ideas of what is suitable has. Certainly modern children are more sophisticated than their forties equivalents but many of the forties children would have left school at 14 and so had to grow up in that respect much quicker.

On the flip side, however, I think the overall vocabulary of children has decreased--certainly, overall literacy peaked years ago. I seem to recall being told that while more people have some literacy, the overall literacy level has dropped, which is why newspapers are basically written at a fifth grade difficulty level. I have no idea where The Hobbit would rate on such a scale, but I daresay that although it has a lighter tone for much of the book and is hardly "too scary" by 2010 standards, it definitely fits with Tolkien's general philosophy of "don't dumb it down for them--they'll only learn the words if they have to use them."

Now, whether that would affect its placement in a bookshop, I've not the slightest idea.

[TheGreatElvenWarrior]

Originally Posted by Formendacil

On the flip side, however, I think the overall vocabulary of children has decreased--certainly, overall literacy peaked years ago. I seem to recall being told that while more people have some literacy, the overall literacy level has dropped, which is why newspapers are basically written at a fifth grade difficulty level. I have no idea where The Hobbit would rate on such a scale, but I daresay that although it has a lighter tone for much of the book and is hardly "too scary" by 2010 standards, it definitely fits with Tolkien's general philosophy of "don't dumb it down for them--they'll only learn the words if they have to use them."

Funny you should say that. I was just talking to one of my friends (well, my mother's friend) the other day about dumbing things down. When I was in elementary school we had reading time in all of our classes. Our teachers had buckets upon buckets of books. I don't think that we had TH or any other Tolkien book in there, but I do remember that we had plenty of chapter books even when I was in first and second grade. Perhaps it's just my school that pushes your learning level higher, but I'm not so sure. As I was saying, the lady whom I was speaking to has two children. One (Christopher) is nine, the other (Emily) is six. Emily has got into my school (which is k-12) and Christopher has not. Apparently Christopher is doing work that way beneath his level of education and Emily is being challenged a bit. The thing is, that in third grade, I remember reading and reading during our hour long reading times. Children are not even being taught by that standard any more. Funny that, since I'm not even out of high school yet.

Now, I believe that this is a major case of dumbing the children down because schools want every child to pass the grade and not be held back. That is severely messing with students' ability to cope with more work and a higher standard of education. At least in the US, I can't really say anything of any other country. In my school we were taught to love learning, to enjoy it, to push ourselves, to be educated outside of school. This, I hold to. I'm not sure about many others in my generation. You see a lot of uneducated people out there. Perhaps they would have done better if they had read TH when they were young.

I read TH when I was thirteen (as most of you probably know already), and it was an easy read. Come to think of it, LotR was a pretty easy read too. I've always seemed to be more advanced at reading than most of my peer group, but that's beside the point. In fourth grade I was at an eighth grade reading level, which isn't very impressive, but I think that we could say that we could up the standards of education. The Hobbit is most certainly a children's book. I am reading it to my nine year old brother and he gets the concepts in it just fine. As does he get the concepts in other books that may not necessarily be of the same level of understanding. As for TH being put in another section of the library, bookshops, ect. I don't know. I bought my copy in the fantasy section in a boxed set alongside LotR, and I've never seen it anywhere else. I do think that putting it in other parts of the shop would be good for business. Despite the fact that a nine year old could read it, and a five year old can understand it, it really is a book that can be read by all groups. Therefore, the more places you can put it in a bookshop, the more advertising you can do for it. That's my take on it anyway.