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

[Greenpeanutsnail]

My DD is reading the Hobbit and so far thinks it is the best book she has ever read. She wants to read Lord of the Rings next. Despite loving reading, I’ve never managed to get into Lord of the Rings. I’ve heard it’s a bit more grown up than the Hobbit. Is there anything unsuitable about Lord of the Rings for an 8 year old? I thought here would be a good place to ask! Thank you.

Agree with PP that there's nothing inappropriate in LOTR for an 8 year OLD (other than lots of death) , but she is likely to enjoy it more if she waits a couple of years.

Tolkien wrote the Hobbit for his own children, which is why 8 is probably the perfect age to read it for the first time. It's themes are on a much smaller scale then LOTR.

Personally I would try and avoid watching the movies beforehand. They are fantastic, but I think it's better to read the book first and visualise it with your own imagination without the assistance of Peter Jackson.

I think there is an evolution in the language - the first book - focusing on hobbits is easily readable but by the third book the language has become quite lofty representing the men of Gondor. It is a totally different book which is why it’s easier to read at about age 13-15. I loved the Alan Garner books and my children loved the Susan Cooper series.
Agree with the others - Phil Pullman is mid to late teens as adult themes.

She might like Terry Pratchett (the Tiffany series or the carpet people or truckers series)

A fair point - I think the only one I found genuinely horrifying was the one in the countryside with the spooky corn circles and things. But I was probably more like 9 or 10.

OP - on a completely different note, I read all of Judy Blume's books somewhere between 8-10 and liked those. Except Forever, because all the sex stuff was boring to me at that point.

The black riders at the start are quite scary

My DC all loved the Edge Chronicles and they are beautiful books. They also loved the Bone series of graphic novels (which tend to be massively overlooked, especially in the YA area)

Not the point , but for those who read Alan Garner , did you pronounce it Bri-sing -ga-men in your head ( ie equal emphasis ) or BRISING- a - men . My uncle used to use the latter. I've probably explained that very badly 😊

briSING - gəmən where the ə represents the not-really-a-vowel-at-all neutral sound that squeezes in there if I run the hard-g, m and n together quickly without much enounciation.

In my head the first bit rhymed with 'rising', and the other two syllables were more of an afterthought.

It depends what you regard as inappropriate. No sex but parts can be frightening. The bits with "the watcher in the water" by The Mines of Moria and the encounter with the balrog are quite scary. Best not read just before bed!

I read it at 10 but I hadn’t read the Hobbit, so I had nothing to compare it to. I loved it, still do!

Tuppeny upright, too!

Apologies if I've missed it, but has anyone mentioned the Narnia series yet? I'm guessing the religious symbolism is less welcome than when I was a kid, but it all went straight over my head.

I didn't read LotRs until I was in my 40s and can honestly say that the Shelob chapter was the scariest thing I have ever read. It scared the living daylights out of me. I thought Cormac McCarthy and Thomas Hardy were dark, but Tolkien's Mordor goes darker even than them. Tolkien had a strong sense of the nature of evil, and it's the closest I have ever got to a description of Hell.

That said, I am a total wimp and can't sit through a horror film. Plus, children do like to be a little scared.

If your daughter liked The Hobbit, why not encourage her to read the Narnia books? Tolkien and Lewis were close friends and had similar imaginations (they read one another's works and listened to one another's advice). Personally, I much prefer Lewis and consider him the better writer.

Good shout on Narnia. I most enjoyed the horse and his boy from the series.

Moondial, by Helen Creswell, is a fabulous book, which I read obsessively at around that age (after devouring The Hobbit and Narnia). My children have both really enjoyed it too.

I also loved a book called The Gauntlet by Ronald Welch, which is about a boy who goes back in time to medieval Wales from the 1950s. He gets up to all sorts of adventures, and I learned loads about that period in history without realising it!

Oh, now you've reminded me about the Snow Spider books by Jenny Nimmo. Absolutely superb, I loved them as a child, all full of Welsh magic. My 11yo has a copy, but hasn't been inspired to actually read them 😭 Maybe I'll pinch it off her and read it to her sister...

E Nesbit's fantasy stories -

Five Children and it
The Phoenix and the Carpet
The Story of the Amulet

The House of Arden

The Enchanted Castle

(The Magician's Nephew owes a lot to E Nesbit)

This besides the point but having read this thread I have just read the Weirdstone of Brisingamen again & am now on to the Moon of Gomrath.
I read these when I was 8. I am now in my 60s 😊. The dialogue is more stilted than I remember & much less "scary" but still exciting. Much less scary than eg Shelob's lair but an avaricious reader I think may like them. I am going to re read the Narnia series after this. Which is a great suggestion and definitely in my favourite books when I was 8

For context I am reading these after finishing the Slow Horses books ( haven't watched the TV series but will )

@Dappy777 - Yes I think Tolkien and Lewis were friends at Oxford and met in a pub (The Eagle & Child? ) with a group they called the Inklings. I loved both of their work & so rooted in culture ( whether Anglo Saxon or religious ) in a way I had no idea about when I first read them.

Anyway hope @Greenpeanutsnail has lots on her list for her DD. Some of these books I would love to read for the first time at that age , because I loved them. And it's a magical thing I think to read things for the first time which you remember decades on.

I read them all to my DD (who loved books, but didn’t like reading) - except the Last Battle. As a Sunday-school going child I’d understood the religious subtext of the others and didn’t like that one at all - poor Susan.

Tolkien and Lewis used to share their work with the Inklings while it was in progress. One of the group (Neville Coghill I think) greeted the latest chapter of LOTR with ‘Not another f…..g elf!’. Tolkien disapproved of TLTWATW because he disliked allegory. Though LOTR is heavily influenced by Christianity.

Thank you all so much for your great ideas. She is still intent on trying to read Lord of the Rings. Just wants to finish The Hobbit first. We’ve had a chat and she knows that she may or may not like LOTR and that’s ok and there are so many other books to read. I have been making a list of the excellent suggestions on here. Thank you.

Have you read the Inklings by Humprey Carpenter I read it many many years ago. The Eagle and the Child where they used to meet shut in 2020 but there are plans afoot to re-open it.

When the films were in production I used to follow The Tolkien Forum but later on it all got a bit too high brow for me. I occasionally pop in and have a look but most of the people I used to chat with have left

@Purplebunnie Yes I have read The Inklings- still have it somewhere. I am a Tolkien nerd myself but I do find some fellow nerds a bit intense about the whole thing.

I read it at 9, to prove a point to my brother. Would say a lot of it went over my head and there were themes I was too young for. Would agree with others to wait a bit. But I was very smug when I told him I'd finished it.

Interestingly I tried to read it again as a young adult and couldn't get into it at all. So in a way Im glad I did it when I did!