It All Begins Here

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

This is where it all began. Without Bilbo Baggins, J.R.R. Tolkien's reluctant hero, there is no fantasy genre. Tolkien not only started the genre, but he created the gold standard against which all other works will forever be compared.

The beauty of this novel is that it is just as entertaining and engrossing for young folks as it is for adults. It's a book that can be read as a child and savored as a lifelong friend later in life.

What factors recommend The Hobbit to a reader? Well-developed and memorable characters, wondrous new races, accessible language with a poetic cadence, and a driving plot.

It begins with a contented hobbit. He likes his life in the quiet Shire and isn't too sure what to make of the wizard who shows up at his door and says he's being hired as a burglar for a group of adventuring dwarves. The dwarves are off to recover their treasure from an evil dragon--and the treasure that the dragon has collected from everyone else. They need a "burglar," someone who can find traps, get them out of tight spots, and steal the treasure from under the nose of a watchful and wise dragon. Bilbo, the hobbit in question, lets himself be talked into leaving his comfortable home and is thrown into far more adventures than he bargained for.

While there are many themes in this that are repeated in the Lord of the Rings trilogy that it precedes, this book is much more of a book for young people. It is first and foremost a fantasy adventure book. We get our first taste of Middle Earth, but we aren't dunked into the politics the way we are in Lord of the Rings.

The Hobbit is very much a prequel to Lord of the Rings. One of Bilbo's "side" adventures in this novel is the push that gets the boulder rolling in the trilogy. He unwittingly finds an item of great power that will forever change his world.

This book is a classic and should be on every school's required reading list, so rampant are references to it throughout other literature. If you haven't read this book yet, do yourself a favor and get it right away. You'll embark on a fantastical quest where a humble hobbit's determination and cleverness win out over a dragon's strength, where every action has a consequence, and where greed brings more sorrow than a goblin's sword.

--B. Redman