Roverandom
Ratings14
Average rating4.1
Roverandom is a novella written by J.R.R. Tolkien, originally told in 1925. It deals with the adventures of a young dog, Rover. In the story, an irritable wizard turns Rover into a toy, and Rover goes to the moon and under the sea in order to find the wizard again to turn him back into a normal-sized dog. The author wrote Roverandom for his son Michael Tolkien to amuse him upon the loss of his favorite toy — a little leaden dog. The work is in tone a children's story, but contains many allusions and references in the manner of "Farmer Giles of Ham".
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Working my way through Tales From the Perilous Realm for the first time, but I've already read a couple. This was a re-read.
This was originally written for Tolkien's son, Michael, when he lost his toy dog. With that being said it's incredibly silly, and lighthearted. Rover the dog bites a wizard on the seat of his pants and is turned to a toy dog. This is the story of his journey through that, and his journey home.
My favorite thing about this little tale is that you can still see the grand scope in which Tolkien writes. His mine clearly always saw the big picture, and what could be, rather than just weaving a little something-something...even for his 4 year old son.
Personally a 5/5* for me. I liked it even more the second time.
An absolutely wonderful little book filled with incredible imagination from the author, shown by the setting of the moon and the sea. The moon especially captivated me; it just seemed like an amazing, beautiful place to be! And (almost) all of the characters were utterly delightful, Roverandom and his moon-dog and mer-dog friends most of all! I can't believe I've had this book simply sitting, unread, on my shelves for years, being completely unknowing of the marvellous little story that lay inside!
So I read this because it is Tolkien, and I haven't come into contact with anything other than the regulation Hobbit and Lord of the Rings (and the Silmarillion, but lets not go there), so I was interested to see how his kids books worked.
I thought it was pretty good. There are the Tolkienesque elements such as touching on his mythology (which are fairly boringly summarised in the introduction and the notes section at the end), and or course wizards and dragons. Written around 1925, (the Hobbit was published in 1937 and the Lord of the rings from 1945-54) there are a few elements here which hint at trial runs for future works - Roverandom is carried by a seagull, the three wizards featured all have elements of Gandalf about them. Of course it is expected that his epic works were in progress much earlier than they were published, so who can say which came first?
I haven't outlined the plot, as there is enough description in the blurb.
