by shear coincidence, my 5 year old daughter decided to pick this book of the shelf today. i had given her a very brief synopsis of the book once, for a bedtime story, and she decided today that she wanted to read it. i was rather surprised, we haven't really read any large books (without pictures!!) together before, not even sorcerer's stone. but she loves it! i read 12 pages tonight and she wanted to keep going. i only stopped because it was getting late. what is your success with reading this or other "big books" to young children?

Well I dont have kids lol but, when I was a kid my dad read me The Hobbit, and after that I read it myself, and The LOTR books even though they were *very big* but I worked my way through them. I think there was a lot that I didnt understand as a kid.
Rereading The Hobbit now for the Book Club for the first time in a long whiles was a real pleasure though (apart from HP and Artemis Fowl, I cant reread books), it broght back a lot of memories of the book and of reading it / being read the book. And, I was suprized both by how much I remembered and how much I'd forgotten, and also how I interpreted things differently now than when I was like 7 or 8 years old. (But, even now there are still some words that I dont know the meaning of)

I read The Hobbit to my granddaughter when she was about 8. I downloaded and printed out maps of Middle Earth. As we read, she traced the journey in red ink and kept up a running dialog. A short plastic sword that had once belonged to some pirates when we read Peter Pan suddenly became Sting. She fought spiders, figured out clues, rode the rapids in a cardboard box, and had a wonderful adventure--almost as much fun as I had reading it to her.

That was three years ago. About a month ago she came home from school with a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring, telling me how much she loved Tom Bombadil.

Thanks for the thread Myris

The books I've read to my daughter, after The Hungry Caterpiller level were things like Harry Potter, obviously lol, Artemis Fowl, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Northern Lights and probably one or two others. By the time we had worked our way through those her tastes and mine were beginning to vary and she wanted to read her own books which is fine, she's grown into an avid reader with her own individual tastes. I've always allowed her to choose her own books from whatever genre or age group she wanted, I find if they're not ready for something they'll be bored and not read it anyway and I wanted to encourage her to make her own choices because I think that in itself is an encouragement to read. Despite her independence I continued to read HP to her because we had an agreement that we would read them all in the same way, ie I would read them aloud to her the first time so that we both knew at the same time what was happening - not gasping "Oh No!" or laughing/crying wasn't something we could cope with from each other without wanting to know what was happening but not wanting to be spoiled. I did try to read The Hobbit to her but I found neither of us really enjoyed it, it just didn't feel like a good read-aloud-read , and I gave up after the first couple of chapters which put me off reading it again for a very long time. She did, however, read it to herself and enjoyed it. When it was decided that it would be the subject of this month's Book Club I had to read it, much to Pyxis's delight , but I really enjoyed it much more than I expected to which was a nice surprise.

Well, I have no kids of my own yet, but should I decide to have kids, I would absolutely read out loud to them, and Tolkien would certainly make the list. When I was a toddler, my mother became ill for an extended period of time and wasn't up to doing anything active with me, so she would spend hours upon hours just reading to me. I have vivid memories of sitting in her lap as she read the Little House and Narnia books to me and asking her to point to the words. I learned to read at a very young age, and I have always been an avid reader, and I think both are simply a result of having someone spend so much time reading aloud to me. That is something I would absolutely want to pass on to my kids.

I first read The Hobbit when I was in third grade and someone in school loaned it to me. I absolutely loved it from that very first read, and I remember I was left with so many questions that my mother handed me a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring like the day after I finished The Hobbit. (probably just to shut me up... ) LOTR was the first set of books that I ever wore out.

As far as reading "big" or "grown up" books to kids, again, I am not a parent, but I am a teacher, and I think it's great to push kids in a positive way like that. When kids find something that interests them, they will push themselves to explore it or figure it out if they have the encouragement and positive support to do so. Like HP, I think The Hobbit and LOTR are engaging stories that can grip kids (and adults for that matter) and draw them in, and make them want to find out what happens, even if there are some hard words along the way.

thanx for all your replies! you all have some great ideas. wordsaremagic - what a great idea to print out maps, and using props to play out the story- you sound like an awsome grandma!
i remember trying to read the hobbit myself as a kid, and i really didn't like it much, i just couldn't get into the story, when i read it again years later, i loved it of course. so i really didn't think a 5 year old would like it, but she seems very interested when i'm reading. i read some more to my daughter tonight- the parts with the singing- i forgot about the singing. it was pretty terrible as i have no idea what the tune is supposed to be. i'll have to listen to the lotr sound track maybe and get some inspiration!
my daughter doesn't want to read harry potter for some reason ah well maybe in a couple of years she'll come around and then she will enjoy it all the more.

(grandpa) Oh Props are great--with HP also. Wands, brooms, cauldrons, capes, toy dragons--whatever. Even plastic toy easter eggs came in handy. They became dragon eggs. Okay--a little background. According to my granddaughter, a troll sat on Dumbledore, and while he was recovering she was appointed temporary Head Master (Mistress) of Hogwarts. She instituted some curriculum changes. One was in Care of Magical Creatures. Every student was given a dragon egg to care for. Now at this point she started mixing in Paolini's Eragon series. As Head Mistress she hired Eragon to teach care of Magical Creatures and gave every student a dragon egg to care for. I found some small plastic dragons at WalMart, one red and one blue. They promptly became Ruby and Frostbite, a fire dragon and an ice dragon. She gave the Hogwarts students dragon types you never dreamed of.

While she was head mistress, she instituted mandatory piano lessons and swimming lessons for all Hogwarts students. Draco really objected to both, but since his father is in Prison, there wasn't much Draco could do about it.

I could go on with all the things she imagined or all the things she has imagined with all the books we have read: Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde (that's all about drugs she tells me), Moby Dick (you should hear an eleven year argue about who is crazier, Ahab or Nemo, and why), Dave Barry's Peter Pan prequels, Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series, A Series of Unforntuate Events, Stroud's Bartimaeus Trilogy...

Props play a big role, but they need not be elaborate. A cardboard box from the department store can be a ship, a barrel, a treasure chest, an airplane, a coffin. My daughters would take almost any object--a box, a blanket, a vase, a ruler, and turn them into things I would never have dreamed of. They, like my granddaughter, became great readers. In High School, they completely destroyed my copy of the works of Shakespeare reading it to each other. One of the greatest things I have is a video tape of my eldest daughter as a High School senior acting out (with character voices) the entire story of the Wizard of Oz by herself with a small bench as the only prop.

Imagination is the greatest gift we humans possess. It drives us in all aspects of human activity: science, law, art, literature, everything. Use whatever is in your hands--a plastic cup, a pencil, a beach towel, a stick, a shopping bag. The magic is, as expressed in the movie Willow, in your own hand. The same theme is in the recent movie Kung Fu Panda.

I loved reading The Hobitt with my boys. We also charted things on maps, I'd have the kids draw images or act out scenes. It really helps the child learn to make that "movie" image go off in their heads when they read.

It was more fun for me when my oldest and I took turns reading it to my youngest.

One really cool thing I did myris that you might love is I had my kids keep journals about their reading. Even before they were fluid writers they would draw pictures of the scenes with little faces on it to help them remember how they felt while they read and we'd copy down words they thought were cool. Eventually this turned into a more mature journal as the grew, but it really helped them learn to respond to the literature at a very young age.

All the kids in my family were fond of listening to books read to them. During a summer holiday all adults were reading books to the small ones almost all the time, until we eventually (big mistake!) ran out of books to read. So I started re-telling the Hobbit from memory. I surely made a lot of mistakes regarding the details, but the kids were enthusiastic about Bilbo (the smallest being the hero), the dwarves, Gandalf (kids like wizards!) and their adventures. When my daughter was old enough, I did the same, only this time with the book at hand to avoid the mistakes.

The Hobbit was the first long book we read to our son. He was about 3 at the time and we could only get through a couple of pages a day but he loved it and stuck with it. After that, while he still loves the kiddie picture books you get, he also likes having a chapter book read to him as well. We have picture books out in the lounge with Miss 2 there as well, then Master 3 and Master 5 (the one we read The Hobbit to) climb into bed and Daddy reads a chapter book to them. So far they've been through The Hobbit, the Narnia books, Alice in Wonderland, and the HP books (they are currently on PoA). And Master 5 has begun to read PS to me (very slowly and with lots of help on the words but he's persevering) which is so fun. All from reading the Hobbit to him when he was just a wee lad

DorisTLC I love the idea of the journals. I think that will be a great addition to our wee ritual. They can listen to Daddy read while they make their picture. Could keep Master 3 from becoming so fidgety as the story progresses

This is interesting because, like I said I was read The Hobbit as a kid and then I read it for myself, too, I guess because it had been read to me, I could follow it more easily.
But, rereading it now for the BC after all these years, I can see that (for some people) it would be a difficult book to read aloud to someone else. There were parts of the book that I was totally enthralled in, I couldnt read fast enough to see what would happen next. But, there were other parts that I found really tough going, either I had to flick back a couple pages to see who was who or what was happening, or I had to read the paragraph like three times to make any sense of it. But, maybe that's because since HP I now analyze every word, every action or event lol.

This is just so wonderful. It's been great to hear so many people talk about reading to kids as though they are intelligent, imaginative people. I don't remember how old I was when I read the hobbit, but I know that when I was 10 my mum had to go and tell my teacher off for calling me a liar for claiming to have read the Lord of the Rings. Don't get me wrong - I'm not claiming I understood every little thread and every deep dimension to the story, but I had read it and understood it as a good story. I have always remembered how hurt I felt to have been dismissed as unable to have done so.

I have read the Hobbit to both my children and they both love it. My favourite time of day is bedtime, when we sit down and I read to them (they love my character voices and get very cross if I use the wrong one!). My daughter is just seven and we are still working though HP. At the moment we are reading the Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander. A must for any little girl who loves stroppy heroines!
My son is nine and we have read all the HP books and have the most amazing discussions. He came up with a very thoughtful analysis of how Voldemort's horcruxes were just like Sauron's Ring last year, which was a wonderful conversation to have. I don't talk down to him and he responds by not feeling worried about coming up with off the wall theories! Reading, both aloud and alone, has given my children an amazing vocabulary. And it's so much fun!!!!!

QUOTE

Imagination is the greatest gift we humans possess. It drives us in all aspects of human activity: science, law, art, literature, everything. Use whatever is in your hands--a plastic cup, a pencil, a beach towel, a stick, a shopping bag. The magic is, as expressed in the movie Willow, in your own hand.

What an incredible statement - can I have permission to write that in big letters in every school in the country?!

Cristyn

I haven't read very many long books aloud to my kids, once they started reading on their own, they wanted to read everything on their own. I did read PS/SS to my eldest when he was five years old, but after that he moved into reading Magic Treehouse by himself...and that was it, he had a new skill and by jove, he was going to do it by himself!

This same child is now eleven, and I have tried to sell him on reading Hobbit with me, but his current phase is classic cars and that is where his choice of literature is leading him at the moment. I say literature, I really mean those big thick know-it-all books that list every tiny piece of information you ever wanted to know about classic cars...which he then shares with us in minute detail at the dinner table. I'd rather talk about The Hobbit.

i have been reading the hobbit to my 5 year old all week, and i am still surprised how interested and inspired she has been by this book. she has never been this enthralled by a book like this before. i took a few of your suggestions, i printed out a map of middle earth which she thought was great, and got her a little journal to draw pictures in. she filled 5 pages tonight. at school today she did a beautiful painting of bilbos hill, covered in round doors. i am just so glad we can share something we both love, its becoming a really special time for us, and thank you all for the great suggestions for making the story even more special.

I definitely think that The Hobbit is a good book to read to children - it is an adventurous book with plenty of excitement, and it is very clean. There is little to no language (I have to remember that dwarves are in this book, so there may be some language!), it is a very humorous book, especially with Fili, Kili, and Bombur, and it is exciting enough to really keep the interest of many kids.

I know that when I was in the 5th grade and read the book for the first time, I wished that I had picked it up earlier!