My fifth grade reader and I began The Hobbit today. I was nervous because the writing style is so much denser than current children's books. That is, there's so many more words on the page, it's visually daunting. And personally as a kid, I had a hard time getting into the story.
I couldn't tell at first what he thought about the book, but then suddenly he said, "Okay. I'm going to literally run to the bathroom."
He ran (literally) to the door, stopped, turned, and said, "This book is really good!"
Sitting there and hearing this fifth grader read Tolkien for the first time was the best feeling. Here's hoping he can stick with it! I will keep you posted.
We read it in fourth grade, and I loved it. To this day it's one of my favorites. It wasn't daunting at all, and we had a great teacher who gave us tons of great activities to go with it (illustrating scenes, outlining Thorin and Co.'s journey on the map, lots of awesome stuff). I think it's awesome that elementary kids get to read the book before they hit that middle school "too cool for books" mentality (which, granted, not everybody hits, but I know plenty of people that did).
ReplyDeleteThat's awesome! It's good to hear that you read it in fourth grade. I have no concept of when kids read what. My Dad read me and my sister The Hobbit when we were little, but I only got interested in the Gollum scenes because of the riddles. I wanted some girl characters! I can appreciate it more now.
ReplyDeleteThat map idea is great, maybe I'll try that with my fifth grader!