The Hobbit

Bibliographic Information: Tolkien, J.R.R. (1937). The hobbit, or there and back again. New York: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN: 9780618002214

Plot Summary: Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit—that is, short in height and ample in foot-size, and he rather enjoys the quiet life in Bag End. When his solitude is interrupted by the wizard Gandalf, and large assembly of boisterous dwarves infringe on Bilbo’s reluctant hospitality, he is faced with a difficult decision: join them as they reclaim their treasure from the dragon, Smaug, or stay home and regret an opportunity for a bit of adventure. After much deliberation (and cleaning up after the dwarves) Bilbo goes with the latter.

            Beyond the town of Hobbiton, Bilbo, Gandalf, and the Dwarves employ the hobbits stealth and small stature to scout and thieve his way through Middle Earth. In the process, they outsmart a group of trolls, experience the grandeur of Rivendale, play a game of riddles with a creature named Gollum, get rescued from goblins by eagles, escape the webs of giant spiders, and ultimately face the dragon.

            Bilbo successfully returns home, where he enjoys the peace and quiet, but he finds that he’d rather have conversations with wizards and dwarves, than hobbits, who are simple minded and rather boring. Bilbo secretly conceals a ring he found in Gollum’s cave that turns him invisible—a trinket that segues into The Fellowship of the Ring.

Critical Evaluation: Bilbo’s heroic journey can be viewed as a sort of coming-of-age tale. His strength and courage are aspects of his nature that he would have never known about, had it not been for Gandalf’s invitation for adventure. Though their quest centers around finding and splitting a large treasure, Bilbo learns a great deal about sacrifice and hard work to get there. The contrast with Gollum’s form of greed is a theme that carries out through the whole series, when larger issues of good vs. evil come forth. Still, Bilbo’s faults are present, as he is completely taken with the power of his newfound ring.

Reader’s Annotation: Bilbo Baggins is about to be uprooted from his comfy life and thrown into the cave of a dragon.

Author Information: Gale’s Contemporary Author’s Online states, “J. R. R. Tolkien is best known to most readers as the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, regarded by Charles Moorman in Tolkien and the Critics as ‘unique in modern fiction,’ and by Augustus M. Kolich in the Dictionary of Literary Biography as ‘the most important fantasy stories of the modern period.’ From 1914 until his death in 1973, Tolkien drew on his familiarity with Northern and other ancient literatures and his own invented languages to create not just his own story, but his own world: Middle Earth, complete with its own history, myths, legends, epics, and heroes. Tolkien's life's work, Kolich continued, ‘encompasses a reality that rivals Western man's own attempt at recording the composite, knowable history of his species. Not since Milton has any Englishman worked so successfully at creating a secondary world, derived from our own, yet complete in its own terms with encyclopedic mythology; an imagined world that includes a vast gallery of strange beings: hobbits, elves, dwarfs, orcs, and, finally, the men of Westernesse.’ Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy has drawn a readership from multiple generations and has been adapted to award-winning feature films. It is unquestionably one of the most popular and influential fantasy works ever written.

Tolkien began to create his secondary world while still in school, shortly before enlisting to fight in World War I. In 1914, according to Humphrey Carpenter in J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography, Tolkien wrote a poem based on a line from the works of an Old English religious poet. Entitled "The Voyage of Earendel, the Evening Star," the poem marked the first appearance in his work of the mariner who sails across the heavens through the night, and was ‘the beginning of Tolkien's own mythology’—the stories that, edited by Christopher Tolkien, appeared after the author's death in "The History of Middle Earth" series and The Silmarillion. Nearly all of Tolkien's fiction drew on these stories for their background. The Hobbit had at first no connection with Tolkien's legendary histories; he wrote it to please his own children and later remarked that "Mr. Baggins got dragged against my original will" into his imagined mythos. The Lord of the Rings also moved into the realm of legend until it became the chronicle of the last days of the Third Age of Middle Earth. After The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien published a sequence of related poems, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, but the other fiction he published during his lifetime, including the satirical Farmer Giles of Ham, the allegorical "Leaf by Niggle," and Smith of Wootton Major, one of his last works, drew on other sources.”

Genre: Fantasy

Subjects: dwarves, elves, dragons, Hero’s journey, adventure, magic

Curriculum Ties: The Hero's Journey, Race, Cultural Perspectives

Booktalking Ideas: Can you think of time when you left your comfort zone and was happy that you did?

How does Bilbo’s story apply to human life?

Reading Level/Interest Age: 12 +

Challenge Issues/Defense: Due to depictions of magic and evil forces, this book may be challenged. If so, refer to:

1.     The San Francisco Public Library Collection Development Policy, Selection Criteria, and Teen Collection documents.

2.     The California Department of Education District Selection Policies, Reading Lists, and Resources for Recommended Literature: Pre-K-12.

3.     A hard copy of the ALA’s Library Bill of Rights.

4.     Mixed book reviews from School Library Journal, Kirkus, and Publisher’s Weekly.

5.     Book selection rationale.

6.     If necessary, The San Francisco Public Library’s Request for Reconsideration of Library Materials Form.

Reason for Selection: While the Lord of the Rings trilogy is an excellent introduction to the fantasy genre, The Hobbit offers just the right length to interest reluctant readers.