Book Club: The Hobbit

The Hobbit, our second and very popular summer book club selection, was a winner with the children! We'd let the kids pick (via a Doodle poll) the summer titles from a collection of seven, and The Hobbit received nine out of ten possible votes.

(During this book club I was helping with the younger kids who were having fun with Marcia Brown's retelling of Stone Soup, so much of my information comes from my children.)

Can you imagine a Book Club about The Hobbit without enjoying Hobbit food? Of course not! So we met for lunch, which also worked perfectly for the Stone Soup crowd!

Scads of websites exist filled with ideas for Lord of the Rings recipes. We found these particularly helpful:


Food in Tolkien's Hobbit


English Victorian Scones

Seed Cake

Middle Earth Recipes

Music played as the children entered the "dining hall."  The luncheon consisted of Melton Mowbray Pork Pie, cold roast chicken, seed cake, another cake, hard boiled eggs, scones and jam all served with apple cider. Interesting. Very interesting!



While they ate, the students discussed the book and tried their skill at telling and guessing riddles. But after sitting for nearly an hour and a half, it was time for some action, so we moved to the gym.

First the students were divided into two teams for a game of tag between fleeing dwarfs/Hobbit/Gandolf and pursuing goblins. The dwarf company had two swords with glo-sticks taped to them to represent the elfish blades which glowed blue when goblins were nearby. If a dwarf was holding one of the swords, he couldn't be tagged, but if he had no sword he could be tagged. If the goblins  tagged all of the dwarves, then the goblins won. Meanwhile, the dwarfs had to run around, tagging certain objects. Those who managed to tag all of them were declared winners. Once all the goblins won, and another time some of the dwarfs claimed victory.

Next the kids took turns entering the "Goblin Cave" (large storage closet) to try to find the all-important ring. The ring had been immersed in a vat filled with water beads which become very slimy when hydrated.  (Try a Dollar store for these fun things!) But before they could get their hands into the vat filled with "goblin blood", they had to find it, not an easy task in the dark! About half of the students succeeded.

The younger ones enjoyed the web, too

An obstacle course modeled after the spiders in Mirkwood comprised the third activity. The kid set up paint bucket "trees" and then wound rope and kite string through to form a web. They had to try to get through the tangled web without touching either trees or web. If they did touch either, they had to restart.












Shooting Smaug (a beautiful dragon on cardboard) with arrows served as our finale.

Fun was had by all. We're all  ready for another great year of monthly book club meetings, too!