Is Lord of the Rings ok for an 8 year old?

I read it when i was 10 for the first time. But i was a very very precocious reader and even then there were bits of it that just went right over my head.

Plus, and i read it around every other year, the bits with Sam and Frodo just drag on and on and on and on and they still bore me half to death. First time i just skim read until more interesting parts came up.

There is a lot of death and talk of death though, so that may be more of a consideration than the boredom factor.

She should re-read The Hobbit a few times before she tackles LOTR in secondary school. It's not going anywhere and will be waiting for her when she is ready.

Nothing is inappropriate.

but it’s hard language. I tried at about 8 for the same reasons abs struggled.

It depends on the 8 year old. Obviously it was written in the 1940s/1950s and is quite literary, so there's no sex or language issues, but whether parts of it are too scary at that age is hard to say. You know your own child. But I'd agree with previous posters that 12 might be more like it, that was when I read it and I think I had a better understanding of it then that I would have at 8 or 9.

Lord of the Rings is great! Completely fine for an 8 year old. In these books “grown up” just means the book is a bit less accessible for children to read - the sentences go on forever, she may find she doesn’t know all the words as some of them are quite archaic, the endless descriptions of the landscape etc. Not that anything inappropriate happens, Tolkien would be rolling in his grave at the suggestion 😂

There's nothing unsuitable at all, but it can be heavy going in places. I think I read it at around 11-12.

Oh, no, OP!

When I was a child, I read The Hobbit and absolutely loved it. My mother took it back to the library and ask the librarian for the Lord of the Rings, which was in the adult library, rather than the children’s library that I belonged to. The children’s librarian said that she’d get it, but she didn’t think I’d like it because it really wasn’t like The Hobbit. I insisted and persisted so I got the Lord of the Rings first volume and I just could not get into it. In fact, I think it’s spoiled it for me into adulthood.

It’s really hard to say no, but the thing is, the Lord of the Rings absolutely is not just a continuation of The Hobbit, either in style or themes.

Sorry.

I would say 13 is a more suitable age although I can’t quite say why