Happy National Hobbit Day, September 22, Bilbo (and Frodo!) Baggins’ Birthday! A year ago, I don’t think that date would have been on my radar. For you see, I thought the Tolkien train had left the station for me. I, too, like Bilbo, was an unlikely adventurer.

And then my journey began. Over the summer I knew I was going to teach 6th grade literature this year, and The Hobbit was a centerpiece. A staple. A rite of passage. So, I prepared. I read The Hobbit for the first time (shhh) over the summer. I listened to it on an audiobook — read by “Gollum” himself. I studied resources. I quizzed my family (the real Tolkien nerds) about places and terms and realized that this was on the scale of the Star Wars universe. I had my work cut out for me if I was going to fully embrace this book.

Although I love Lewis and passing through the wardrobe into Narnia, I had thus far escaped the clutches of Middle-Earth.

But then something started to change. I started falling in love with the hobbit. When I saw Bilbo’s reluctance to go on an adventure and his love of home and comfort, and yet he went anyway. (For goodness sakes, he even left home without his handkerchief!) He had my sympathies. So …

When exactly did my feelings start to shift from sympathy to love? What caused the change of heart?

At first, it was the beautiful words, the language, the sentences. (See J.R.R. Tolkien quote below:)

“They still went on and on. The rough path disappeared. The bushes, and the long grasses between the boulders, the patches of rabbit-cropped turf, the thyme and the sage and the marjoram, and the yellow rockroses all vanished, and they found themselves at the top of a wide steep slope of fallen stones, the remains of a landslide. When they began to go down this, rubbish and small pebbles rolled away from their feet; soon larger bits of split stone went clattering down and started other pieces below them slithering and rolling; then lumps of rock were disturbed and bounded off, crashing down with a dust and a noise. Before long the whole slope above them and below them seemed on the move, and they were sliding away, huddled all together, in a fearful confusion of slipping, rattling, cracking slabs and stones.”

And then about chapter six (page 100 to be exact), after Bilbo escapes Gollum and the goblins in chapter five, and decides to go back for his friends, something changed. Something clicked. I don’t know if it was Bilbo’s bravery or his buttons popping off as he literally squeezed out of the cave, but I started falling in love with the hobbit. And the humor. And all the characters. They became more like people–because they became more like me–scared, then bold, then going for it while still terrified. I could feel it. And then …

Bombur, and Beorn, and Gandalf’s cleverness, and the humanity of it all … I fell in love.

We (the students and I) are about to enter Mirkwood. Gandalf has left the company to tend to “pressing business,” and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Happy Hobbit Day 2024!