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10-25-2010, 07:05 PM | #1 |
Pilgrim Soul
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Teenage kicks?
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.
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10-25-2010, 07:38 PM | #2 |
Gruesome Spectre
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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.
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10-26-2010, 01:49 AM | #3 |
Pilgrim Soul
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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...
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“But Finrod walks with Finarfin his father beneath the trees in Eldamar.”
Christopher Tolkien, Requiescat in pace |
10-26-2010, 05:01 AM | #4 |
Wisest of the Noldor
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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.)
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10-26-2010, 07:09 AM | #5 |
Pilgrim Soul
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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....
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“But Finrod walks with Finarfin his father beneath the trees in Eldamar.”
Christopher Tolkien, Requiescat in pace |
10-26-2010, 07:30 AM | #6 |
Cryptic Aura
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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.
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10-26-2010, 07:32 AM | #7 |
Wight of the Old Forest
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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.
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10-26-2010, 08:50 AM | #8 |
Child of the West
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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.
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10-26-2010, 09:16 AM | #9 |
Dead Serious
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When I worked in the municipal library in high school, we had three copies of The Hobbit, plus the graphic novel version. We had a copy in the Fiction section (which is to say, the adult fiction section), we had a copy in the Young Adults section, and we had a copy in the Junior section (basically, the "kids chapter books" section--not quite YA, but not picture books). The graphic novel ended up in the YA section.
Oddly enough, in the same library, the HoME volumes we had (not a complete set, which was sad, since that was my source for them at the time, as I was in the process of accumulation) were not in the same place. Lost Tales I and II, Lays of Beleriand, Return of the Shadow, and War of the Ring all ended up in (adult) Fiction, but Morgoth's Ring ended up next to Carpenter's biography in the late 800s of the Dewey Decimal System--aka, Adult Non-Fiction.
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10-27-2010, 05:31 AM | #10 |
Blossom of Dwimordene
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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.
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10-28-2010, 01:55 AM | #11 |
Pilgrim Soul
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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.
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“But Finrod walks with Finarfin his father beneath the trees in Eldamar.”
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10-28-2010, 05:26 AM | #12 |
Blossom of Dwimordene
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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.
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You passed from under darkened dome, you enter now the secret land. - Take me to Finrod's fabled home!... ~ Finrod: The Rock Opera |
10-28-2010, 09:28 AM | #13 | |
Dead Serious
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Quote:
Now, whether that would affect its placement in a bookshop, I've not the slightest idea.
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10-28-2010, 10:29 AM | #14 |
Pilgrim Soul
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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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“But Finrod walks with Finarfin his father beneath the trees in Eldamar.”
Christopher Tolkien, Requiescat in pace |
10-28-2010, 12:04 PM | #15 | |
Mighty Quill
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Long post of longness that could have probably been summed up in a few sentences.
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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.
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10-28-2010, 12:10 PM | #16 | |
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Quote:
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10-28-2010, 02:37 PM | #17 |
Pilgrim Soul
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I'm a nerd, let me be....
Well I was a bit young to really notice when it came out but it is a classic..it would have to be to permeate my radar which is usually tuned to baroque opera if anything....
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“But Finrod walks with Finarfin his father beneath the trees in Eldamar.”
Christopher Tolkien, Requiescat in pace |
10-28-2010, 03:59 PM | #18 |
Blossom of Dwimordene
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If you are introduced to Tolkien as a child, it's probably better to start with TH, because the concepts are less complex, and never mind the vocabulary. If you are trying to get a teenager or an adult to read both TH and LOTR, start with the latter one! I've talked to a few adults who have read TH first and didn't get past The Fellowship, because they said "It's TH all over again - what's the point of reading this?" and they say so because they don't know any better. I guess it really depends on the age (well...maybe maturity and reading level and the ability to grasp concepts and read in between the lines) which one you should read first.
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You passed from under darkened dome, you enter now the secret land. - Take me to Finrod's fabled home!... ~ Finrod: The Rock Opera |
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