Comments on: Top 100 Children’s Novels (#12)

By: Top 100: 2010 Picks for Best Children’s Novels (grades 3-8) : PragmaticMom

Top 100: 2010 Picks for Best Children’s Novels (grades 3-8) : PragmaticMom — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 13:56:41 +0000

[...] by L.M. Montgomery#10 The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster#11 The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin#12 The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien#13 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson#14 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of [...]

By: RM1(SS) (ret)

RM1(SS) (ret) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 16:26:07 +0000

Richard Boone as Smaug….

When I was 11, or thereabouts, I had a book which included the first chapter of The Hobbit; a couple years later my sister bought the recently issued Ballantine editions, and I read my way straight through Hobbit and LotR. Loved them!!

That last cover for Khobbit (by Dzhon R R Tolkin) looks mighty familiar – is that a Hildebrandt painting?

By: Constance

Constance — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 20:49:05 +0000

I didn’t think of this but it would probably be in my top 25, and it certainly was very influential re family catchphrases. My mother read the Hobbit to me when I was in 2nd grade so in 3rd I marched into the library to check out the Fellowship of the Ring…and scared myself silly. I also thought Merry was a girl hobbit because I had recently read a Carolyn Haywood with a Merry heroine. Still, I love them all, especially the constant meals in the Hobbit!

Is it too late to submit my guesses for the top ten or is the deadline Monday?

By: David Ziegler

David Ziegler — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 22:16:44 +0000

I responded so early, and semi-grogily, that I missed seeing the Leonard Nimoy clip. Bless you Betsy for including it – what a blast from the past!

By: Donalyn Miller

Donalyn Miller — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 21:44:52 +0000

The first chapter of The Book Whisperer is titled, “There and Back Again”– a nod to this book and my love for it.

I am concerned that my “short list” for the next eleven spots has twenty titles on it. Time to make some hard choices!

By: GraceAnne

GraceAnne — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 20:20:27 +0000

I always require my YA lit students to read The Hobbit, and over half of them usually hate it. It always astonishes me. I remind them that fantasy for young people as we read it now would not exist without The Hobbit, but most of them do not care. It’s very strange. This book is so beloved to me, and stands behind so much of what I teach. I am quite happy to see it here.

By: rockinlibrarian

rockinlibrarian — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 19:34:09 +0000

Aw, drat not getting to comment until the end of the day, I feel left out of the conversation…

Anyway, I am one of those people Monica mentioned, who went and lumped this in with LOTR as not-a-children’s-book and so never expected it to be here, even while other people kept predicting it. I myself actually didn’t read it until 8th grade and I at first just stared blankly at my enthusiastically-recommending mother, thinking, Seriously, I’m supposed to be interested in a book about a fussy middle-aged man (albeit a very short man with hairy feet)? A few pages later, and I forgot that I thought I wasn’t supposed to be interested, distracted as I was by, well, being interested.

Plus, it’s the gateway drug to LOTR, and my son is named Sam, which is not a coincidence. So, important book. My second very happy surprise of the top twenty!

By: Jenny

Jenny — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 18:51:50 +0000

Isn’t that Sean Connery narrating the very beginning of The Hobbit movie? Wow.

By: Brooke Shirts

Brooke Shirts — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 17:45:09 +0000

Very happy to see this book — and the clip from the movie! Now I’ve a hankering to re-watch it, along with The Return of the King, The Last Unicorn, and maybe even The Flight of Dragons. Characters drawn with as many skin wrinkles as possible RULE.

I agree with the other comments: “Where There’s a Whip” has to be the goofiest pseudo-disco fantasy film song ever made.

By: Sam B.

Sam B. — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 15:48:32 +0000

Dear God, did I forget to vote for this?! Noooooooooooooooooo! (In my mind’s ear… is that a real phrase?… I heard Gollum’s scream of anguish at his lost ring when I wrote that.)