Verity's Book

What Is It?

What is it about The Lord of the Rings that makes a ten-year-old girl and nine-year-old sister devour them in four days and go home completely obsessed with plot and characters memorized? Makes them draw series of paper dolls and play sequels and AUs and send paper dolls of themselves to Middle-Earth?

I remember wanting to mince the Balrog when Gandalf died. I was gasping, speechless, shaking the book. I was that into it.

What is it about the books that makes the next sister in line pounce on them at nine and skim books III and V so she can read every single part about Sam? That makes the eight-year-old brother adore it, and the twins a few years later beg him daily to read it to them because they can't read well yet?

Currently Kid #7, still not reading much herself, has had Fellowship of the Ring read to her, and just finished listening to the TT which we can get out of the library on audio. She doesn't pester us to read to her as much as the twins did, but her comprehension of it all at seven years old amazes me. She's not confused, not turned off.

What about those books grips a child so much? How do they embrace the old wording and the long descriptive passages and just not care about all the things that the critics downplayed the book for?

I had the privilege of reading the very last chapter of Return of the King to the twins. They were really quiet. They didn't say anything when I was done. I asked if they wanted to hear the end bit in the appendices where it lists what happened to all the members of the Fellowship, and they said sure, so I did. Finally one of them asked, "Why did he have to go?"

"Frodo?" I said.

"Yeah."

I said some hopefully comforting things about how he couldn't get better in Middle-Earth so he had to sail away to where he could be finally happy and healed.

They were still really quiet. I knew how they felt; I knew how I'd felt when I read the end, turned the page, and realized there wasn't any more. It felt blank, sad. I had reread the last few sentences several times, slowly trying to get into the mind of the author, slowly sensing the peace and the finis in them.

We read the end. We still love the book. I think when we're younger we love it mostly because the story is still there, the adventure, and that's what we read it for. But we don't skip the end either. The end is important to us, and as we get older we realize why; we realize the real-ness of it, the fact that peace will not always come with a dot-to-dot perfect ending.

This was kind of rambling. Just thoughts. Hope you liked it.