The Hobbit, The Tragedy in Newtown, and the Nature of Good and Evil

I had originally just planned to review my first viewing of The Hobbit, but after Friday's tragic events in Connecticut, I felt I had to say something.

As a nation, we have a lot of things to think about. A lot of things to think about as a people. As the human race. There are a lot of hard questions. Gun Control. Mental Health Care. Security measures in certain public places. The media, and how it reports on such events. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers.

But instead of getting all political on the topic, I want to bring it back to my original planned post, and talk about J.R.R. Tolkien, his amazing stories, and what he knows about good and evil. Tolkien served as Second Lieutenant in the British Army during World War I, and without going into too much gruesome detail, suffice to say he saw the horrors of war first hand, and learned of the evil of men in the most horrific ways.

So even though surely Tolkien knew evil was often carried out by men, and surely saw evil deeds done by soldiers on both sides of the conflict, when he wrote, the evil he penned was faceless, and most terrifying when it was an unknown, even ethereal entity (such as Sauron's eye, or the Necromancer in the new film).

I would like to argue that we ought to make evil faceless again. Perhaps even nameless.

The way the media handles events like Friday's tragedy can't possibly help. These sick people, whatever their problems may be, are obviously haunted by what legacy they might leave behind, and when CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC put their names and faces all over the screens that live in all our homes, the next troubled individual thinks that he can be famous too.

I won't reprint their names here, but surely Virginia Tech, Columbine, Sandy Hook, and all other similar such tragedies could have been reduced or even avoided if we didn't make celebrities out of their perpetrators. In our society, in the cult of personality, where being famous is akin to holiness, something has got to change.

There is also a great post about the state of mental health services, over at The Anarchist Soccer Mom. I strongly urge you to read it.

Middle-Grade and Back Again

J.R.R. Tolkien's books always feel like Christmas to me.  The hobbits' adventures span the seasons, but every installment brings to mind snug cottages, crackling fires, and lots of savory stew.  Perhaps this winterfying urge comes from my tradition of annually reading The Lord of the Rings trilogy, a leftover habit from college days when long breaks from school equalled reading binges.  Now, with another of Peter Jackson's epic film adaptations in theaters, I can't help but think it's time to visit The Shire once more.

In the 7th grade, I unearthed The Hobbit from my dad's collection of dog-eared sci-fi/fantasy novels and have never looked back.  In recent years, I was surprised to learn that Stanley Unwin, part of the original publishing house that took on Tolkien's work, gave The Hobbit to his 10-year-old son to read and review before they ultimately acquired it.  I'm intrigued to find that earlier generations placed The Hobbit squarely in the camp of children's literature (ages 5-9).  Though I first read it as a child, there was much in The Hobbit that I didn't appreciate the initial time through: the songs and poems (does anyone else skim through those spots?), the vocabulary, the allusions to mythology.  Perhaps this says something about the weak areas in my own education or how we've all become stupider over the years, but I think it also has something to do with the lack of reader-designations.

Rayner Unwin's original review

The Hobbit hit the shelves long before the designations of "middle-grade" and "young adult" became standard bookstore fare, when readers graduated from children's books to adult novels according to taste, not grade-level or even reading ability.  I think there's something helpful about reading beyond our comprehension, something timeless about being able to return to re-read a favorite and find new things that our past selves might not have perceived.  Have we lost this fluidity in today's classrooms, bookstores, and libraries?  It could be that the middle-grade category, as useful as it is, might also be quite limiting.  Will today's 10-year-olds, faced with more age-determined marketing, reach for a novel they might not fully understand?  Or will they hunt down something aimed specifically at their age-group?

What do you think?  When do the designations "middle-grade" and "young adult" cease to be helpful?  And, whom, primarily do they serve?  

P.S. It's also a good time of the year to pick up Tolkien's Father Christmas Letters.  So clever!  

What was your First Middle Grade Novel?

Merry Monday morning, Mayhemers! I know, it's hard to be chipper on a Monday, but I'm here at work, at 6 AM, so I've got little choice. Well, I suppose I could be grumpy, but it's hard enough to make it through the day as is.

Anyway, today I want to talk about what the first book we fell in love with around the age of MG readers (or in my case, a little before, but that's okay). Now, I know, this is a bit of a stretch. There was no such thing as MG or YA when Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, and it's hard to argue it's a Middle Grade novel when the main character is 50 years old in the book (if I remember correctly). But, I think the argument can be made that were The Hobbit written today, someone in one of the Big 6's marketing departments would sell it as a Middle Grade Fantasy.

Now, I could easily be wrong, but I'll try to make an argument for why it might work. For one thing, even though Bilbo is 50 something, he's a Hobbit, and Hobbits, while hale and hardy, and somehow far more resistant to the power of magic rings than men, aren't actually considered adults until they're 33. So a fifty-year-old Hobbit is still somewhat young. And besides, even full grown Hobbits are just cute. They're always sort of roly-poly, optimistic, and clever. They're the perfect characters for young readers to enjoy, even if they do smoke and drink a lot.

Another thing that I think makes this book one that would fit in well as MG is the plot, and the level of adult content it includes. Which is to say: very little. There is some violence, but it is almost always resolved comically or with a pleasant escape, and there is never any death, unless you count the dragon at the end. Bilbo and his Dwarves escape the trolls when the sun comes up and turns them to stone. They escape the Goblins when the Eagles pluck them from the trees. They escape the Wood Elves by riding barrels down the river. These are all clever ways to get out of danger without including something that would frighten young children. Heck, I read this book in like third grade, and I absolutely fell in love with it. I had the read along graphic novel version that came with a vinyl record you could listen to.

So I could probably go on about this book, and Tolkien, forever, but the point here is that this was the first full length novel I read as a boy, and it engendered my love of reading ever since. It wasn't technically a MG novel at the time, but I think it would fit in on that shelf today, and I have certainly let my kids read it, as young as they wanted to. I can't wait until my nephew is 8 or so, and I can turn him on to Middle Earth as well. Are any of you as excited for the film adaptation as I am?

What do you guys think? Have you read The Hobbit? Think it would sell as MG if published today? What MG books first influenced your love of reading?