By reading The Hobbit to my children, I'm going on an adventure!

We are in COVID-19 social distancing, self-isolating, quarantine, whatever you choose to call it or whatever level you are on. Weeks ago everyone was going to read to kids. I'll just say it: We should have been reading to kids, especially our own kids, anyway. BBC has the CeeBees for bedtime stories. Dolly Parton has been a champion for reading, books, and literacy for over a decade. 

I can push it more: Dads should read to their children. Statistics say that children whose fathers read to them do better in school and have a better handle on reading in general. ALL THAT WORK I poured into each of my children, which admitted got less and less the more we got. It was noble, but if CHRIS READS (The William Shakespeare's Star Wars trilogy most recently) oh now they're going to flippin' Harvard. Seriously?!?! 

this is on our entry wall

Yes, I did my time. I read The Very Hungary Caterpillar. I read Bean's Night so many times we accidentally kept it too long from the library, then lost it, then paid for it and found it. I read Scripture, The Chronicles of Narnia (twice, the second in one school year and a little into the summer), Charlotte's Web, A Cricket in Times Square, Tucker's Countryside, Caddie Woodlawn, Across Five Aprils, and most recently so help me Animal Ark: Hamster in a Handbasket.

Tennessee hike

Now, we return to The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien. A long time ago when the 8yo was only crawling and the 10yo was still working on full sentences we were on vacation and started reading JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit. We read it in Tennessee. We inadvertently left it home and picked up a copy on the way

Tennessee hike 

to Charlie's House on the Eastern Shore later that summer and finished it on the way home. We eagerly anticipated the release of our return to Middle Earth in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey December 2012, conveniently for my birthday. 

studio canvas 2016

Reading them now is obviously influenced by the cinema's rendition of Middle Earth. This may have also been a family costume theme one Halloween, 2016. It hangs on a canvas in the living room. There's been a birthday party themed a and now my youngest three enter Middle Earth with 

Chapter 1: An Unexpected Party. The reading ended with a lengthy discussion of who's who in the Tolkien world based on that picture. No, Haddie is not Bilbo. Haddie is Frodo. Frodo is Biblo's nephew. Yes, Elijah is a dwarf but not one of these. Elijah is Gimli. Gimli is Gloin's son. Gloin is in The Hobbit. Chris is Gandalf, yes, same Gandalf. Jubilee is Gollum. He'll be in it. I am reprising my role as the inanimate object yet again. I am the One Ring. 

The party of Thorin Oakenshield 

Chapter 2: Roast Mutton allowed me to tell, Bilbo's tale of the Trolls, as it was happening, which he retells to the adorable hobbit children in The Fellowship of the Ring. Bless her heart the 10-year-old was completely taken in. She very well could've been one of the adorable hobbit children hanging on every last word and of course no one tells a story like Ian Holm the original Frodo Baggins, now Bilbo Baggins in the Jackson film. 

Chapters 3 and 4 pass without much chatter. The girls want to know if Caleb's elf was at Rivendell. No, Legolas is not in this story. And the Goblin King was quite a hit. Pleased to have Stephen Fry to emulate, down down down to goblin town as it were. 

family collage

Now to Chapter 5 which needs to be read in two parts because it's long and I get tired. In part two, we find the ring and meet Gollum. This so far was the most heart warming moment one could hope for. When reading, of course, there are voices. Elijah does a very good Gollum and I may have threatened him with having to voice this character as he showed off his impression, but I shouldered on. We read the riddles. The girls are enthralled and concerned for Bilbo as they well should be. Then Gollum loses the competition and paddles off to the island and shrieks. My shriek received a "'good one" from the other room. What Sam calls the Slinker and Stinker in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, comes up in the reading as Gollum is talking to himself. I read on doing my best to channel Andy Serkis. It is intense. The girls are one the edge of their proverbial seats. 

Sam and Frodo going to Mordor

...into the wild...

We finish the chapter. The ten-year-old patiently tells me, "You know there's only one of those guys right?" I tell her, "Of course I do but he's having an argument with himself." "Oh," she nods sagely, but not
fully understanding. "You know he's crazy right?" I ask. She nods her head. She is unsure of this fellow who "was miserable, alone, lost," for whom a "sudden understanding, a pity mixed with horror, welled up in Bilbo's heart."

"Mountains, Gandalf!"

Today was Chapter 6: Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire, all 21 pages were insisted upon when I attempted to end part one with "'What is all this uproar in the forest tonight?' said the Lord of the Eagles." 

I can't tell you 

HOW MUCH FUN THIS IS!