My Secret Hobbit

Having just finished the current Lemony Snicket book, Matilda and I were out of good books to read together. She has a stack that she wants to tackle, but on her own, without the benefit of my goofy voices and over-dramatic reading of the narration.

So she turned to her mother, who had a wicked gleam in her eye.

“The Hobbit,” she said.

Now, each night they curl up with Tolkien and begin to wend their way through is wonderfully twisted, circular narration. Hearing my wife explain the proper pronunciation of Gloin is quite amusing. What’s better is seeing my young daughter’s eyes alight with the same joy I had when my brother Marty gave me my first copy of the Hobbit when I was in sixth grade. Had he not been in college when I was in third grade, he may have undertaken the joy of reading the book with me (a tradition my father started with “Tarzan and the Lost Safari”, the reason I could read before I made it to kindergarten).

How could your imagination not run away with that wonderful opening paragraph? Just hearing it recited again sent me back several decades. I had the distinct feeling of a child, ready to go on an adventure. An adventure that would be as real to me as the chair I was sitting in.

As of this time, Matilda has seen Fellowship of the Ring. We knew it was PG-13 and that allowing a child her age to watch it may open us to criticism. In fact, I thought of every argument against letting her watch it. My wife countered them all:

1. They are no scarier than Harry Potter.
2. They have a deep basis in the myth and literature she and I spent far too much time studying, most of which still clutters our bookshelves.
3. This is Matilda. She’s eight going on forty. Smarter than both of us.

So they watched Fellowship and Matilda loved it. They paused it periodically because she had questions, not about the complex plot, but about the deeper history of Middle-Earth. When Frodo accepted the position of Ring Bearer, Matilda yelled out, “No, not Frodo!” When Sam followed him at the breaking of the fellowship, she cried (I do every time I see it as well). And she’s dying to get into the Two Towers.

Now, I know I should feel guilty about letter her watch the movies. I should object and moralize. But I realized something. She’s a smart kid and this isn’t a Jim Carrey film. I’d let her watch Shakespeare (not Titus, mind you). I’d read Beowulf to her if I could. Lord of the Rings is a gateway drug to a rich and varied world of literature (none of it, mind you, authored by Piers Anthony).

Most importantly, I realized that the story of the Ring is laying a good foundation for her. A foundation of history, tradition and myth. If her mind is set afire by reading Tolkien, perhaps she’ll start a long rich life of reading Mallory and the Arthurian legends (my personal obsession). Or maybe, like her mother, she’ll learn to speak Old English and become interested in early English poetry.

She may be considered too young. But she has already learned the deeper message of Lord of the Rings. When her fish died recently she decided she wanted to replace him with not one, but two fish.

“I’ll call them Sam and Frodo,” she said. “That way they’ll never be alone.”

Discuss