My father remarried a few months ago, and my stepmother still owns her own house. She's been cleaning it out for a while, and getting rid of odds and ends (mostly belonging to her ex-husband). She came across this and my father grabbed it to give to me since he knows I like Tolkien. I'm very glad he did. I had never heard of this book before, and was interested in checking it out.Evidently Tolkien wrote it for, or maybe just told it to, his second son after said son had lost a toy dog on a beach outing. He liked it so much that he tried to have it published after The Hobbit, but the publishers wanted a sequel instead of this kid's tripe, so he put this away and wrote The Lord of the Rings instead. Now, I'm glad he wrote LOTR, but surely the publishers could have just nipped this in their printing press, but oh well.The story involves a dog who steps afoul of a wizard. The wizard turns him into a toy dog, who gets purchased by a mother for her boy, and the boy loses the dog on the beach. Another wizard turns him into a real dog again, but he's still toy size. There's a trip to the moon, more wizards, a dragon, spiders, sea serpents, dreams, merpeople, a whale, sea goblins, and all kinds of Tolkienish things. These are the bedtime stories the Tolkien children heard, and it makes me wonder if a Tolkien child ever got a wink of sleep.At any rate, while some of these creatures are inherently creepy, Tolkien spins his yarn in the same light vein as The Hobbit, and it all winds up being very amusing. I'm sure if it was written in the same heavy language of LOTR with its multiple lexicons, then this would be nowhere near as enjoyable. Best of all, there is not a single song in it. Well, songs are sung, but we don't have to read the lyrics to any of them, and everything is in English. In short: Roverandom is the anti-Silmarillion as far as writing style is concerned. (Actually, that's just a guess. I've never made it through The Silmarillion, and know far more people who have attempted it and failed than I do people who succeeded to make it to the end).The wit and humor in this story is superb, and I enjoyed every page of it. All the wizards, and some of the other characters, have the Gandalf/Thorin grumps going on, which has always been highly entertaining to me. Roverandom almost inadvertently destroys the world when he bites a shark's tail-fin for a bit of fun because it causes a chain reaction that upsets the sea-serpent, a beast so powerful that not even the most powerful wizard, the man in the moon, can do much with him. (The last time he tried, they accidentally sank Atlantis before the sea serpent just went back to sleep). Just think of the scene in Police Academy when Fackler tosses an apple out the window of his cruiser which starts a riot, and you'll understand.It's only 89 pages, and I finished it in a single evening. This version of the book has a lengthy introduction which I skipped, so I can tell you nothing about it, but that doesn't mean there isn't interesting stuff in it. I almost never read introductions that aren't written by the author himself, and I might even stop doing that. (I'm still smarting from that introduction to The Scarlet Letter). It also has about a million end notes which talk about various changes from the original text, sources of some odd phrases, and what not. I also skipped these, and it was easy to do it. The end notes are just at the end of the book and give the corresponding page number, but there are no end note numbers included in the text of the story, so you have no idea when there's an end note included unless you mark them yourself or constantly flip back to the end notes to see.I recommend this to just about anyone who enjoys a light, kid's fantasy story packed with humorous and witty elements, and especially to dog lovers.
in a sentence or so: a naughty little puppy named Rover is quite rude to a crotchety magician. the magician, needless to say, does not take too kindly to Rover's rudeness and turns him into a toy pup. will Rover be able to ever become a real puppy again?Rover, who reminds me a lot of the Pokey Little Puppy (which is like my FAVE children's book ever), ticks off a magician. his journey then begins on finding his way back to becoming a real dog. he is put in a store window and purchased by a mom for her son, Boy 2 (her second child). Boy 2 is smitten with the toy Rover, but Rover is more concerned about become real again, not just being some little boy's toy. one day on the beach, Rover slips out of Boy 2's pocket and waits in the sand for another magician to help guide him on his journey towards real-dog-hood again.this was a really creative story. and no wonder, i mean it is written by Tolkien and all. Rover spends equal time on earth, on the moon, and in the sea. the writing feels like a parent telling their child a story, which it is. this was written by Tolkien for his son (Boy 2) after he was distraught over losing his toy dog at the beach (Rover). Tolkien draws heavily from Norse mythology in the weaving of his story and has plenty of nods to (then) cultural references. there is a note section in the back of this edition that helps guide the reader who may not be the most familiar with the year 1925 - when this was originally written.complete with dragons, wizards, and the stuff dreams - and nightmares - are made of, Rover remained a realistic and sweet character. he meets lots of fun people and has lots of wacky experiences along the way, as any good adventurer does. this is a cute, fun, sweet and quick read for people of any age.fave quote: "The moon-dog did not blush, because he could not; and he did not say anything, but he went and sat down in a corner and wondered how much the old man knew of everything that went on, and everything tat was said, too. Also for a little while he wondered what exactly the old man meant; but that did not bother him long - he was a lighthearted fellow." 37fix er up: i got a bit impatient for things to be wrapped up. i don't really know why...it's all of 80 pages!
What do You think about Roverandom (2002)?
When people ask me what my favorite book is I usually say it's THE HOBBIT, but sometimes I wonder if this one doesn't actually hold that position. Tolkien had this incredible knack for drawing his reader into an amazing world and I really feel like Roverandom is the unsung hero of his works. And to think, this started out as simply a bedtime story for his children! I highly recommend grabbing a physical copy of this book that includes Tolkien's own artwork for the story. Seeing his visual interpretation of the worlds he "created" (his character goes underwater and to the moon) really emphasizes the enjoyment.
—Emily
As wonderful and rich and moving as he may be sometimes, Tolkien can be terribly boring. There is something of the lightness that makes The Hobbit so much fun, but since Tolkien never fully prepped this book for publication, the final effort was never made to make this appealing to children. I'm sure Roverandom was much better when it was a homey story exclusively for his children. When reading this my first mistake was to read the introduction, which didn't leave off at telling the provenance of the story, but laboriously tries to establish just when parts of the story were written down and even more so tries to justify its publication here as something more than turning out the proverbial pockets of Tolkien's filing cabinets. When finished with that nonsense, the story itself just isn't so appetizing anymore.But here it is, "a full-length fantasy!" about a dog who gets turned into a toy and has wonderful adventures while trying to become a dog again. I will say that the story and the humor is better than Bombadillo, but I think we all know just how much that amounts to. It reminds me of that jab by somebody or other, about how sad it is to read Shakespeare when he's really, really trying to be funny. The story does come full circle and, having been prepped for review by publishers, is better than your average dead-author capitalization piece, but I didn't love it, I didn't necessarily like it, and I can't even say it offers any insight into Tolkien other than that he had a very good imagination, which we already know.
—Myles
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.
—Daren
