The Hobbit Read Along
Week 1 Study Guide www.redeemedreader.com
Reading Schedule:
Week 1, Nov. 5
Chapters 1-3
57 pgs.
Week 2, Nov. 12 Week 3, Nov. 19 Week 4, Nov. 26 Week 5, Dec. 3
Chapters 4-6 Chapters 7-8 Chapters 9-12 Chapters 13-19
61 pgs.
61 pgs.
67 pgs.
87 pgs.
Main Idea Each Week: Put on Your Detective Hat
J.R.R. Tolkien was a Roman Catholic Christian who believed that his writing expressed his Christian worldview. How can a fantasy story—a story that doesn't reference God or faith—teach us about the
God of the Bible and history? And conversely, when is looking for Christ in the story twisting the text?
During the upcoming weeks, we'll begin to answer these questions, starting with an interview next week with Jim Ware, author of Finding God in the Hobbit .
In the meantime, as you read this coming week, put on your detective hat and see if you can find hints of Tolkien's Christianity in the story. If you had been in Tolkien's shoes, can you think of ways you could use Biblical ideas without actually naming God? Can you think of other stories (i.e. Narnia stories) that seem to how would ee what Christian clues you can dig up!
Discussion Questions/Extras:
Each week, we'll have some questions for your family. But this week, I've decided to share a secret with you—and one that will hopefully involve a lot of fun discussion. When I was a kids' book editor,
I found that a good way to understand the significance of characters or events in a story was to play the
What If Game.
Here's how: When you finish your reading for an evening, take an important character or plot twist and ask, what if Tolkien had written it differently? For instance, how would the story be different if Smaug had been named Betsy or Muffy? What if instead of a dragon, he had been an overgrown French poodle? Or an angry pancake?! Use you imagination here! Hopefully, you can appreciate now a little more maybe why Smaug was a good name and character choice for Tolkien's tale—and how important he is to the story.
Now it's your turn! What characters or plot twists can you turn on their heads? And how does that give you insight into why Tolkien may have written the story as he did?
Radio Theater Contest
Ever wanted to make your own radio theater? Now you can! Record two or three pages of your family or yourself reading a few pages of The Hobbit. Please limit the length to about five minutes. You'll need to use a digital recorder or free recording software like Audacity so that you can email the file in

mp3 format to emily@redeemedreader.com
. Deadline for submissions will be Monday, November
26 th . We'll narrow the best down to three or four finalists, and then we'll post them on our blog that week for readers to vote on. The winner will get one copy of a Hank the Cowdog audiobook, and a free caricature of a family member or friend as a Hobbit character.
Blog About It!
If you're a blogger and you're doing the read along with us, we'd love to hear your insights. Just leave a link to your post in our Read Along comments each week, and we'll try to join the conversation if we can!
Hairy Bikers' Hot Chocolate Recipe:
Ingredients
• 1 vanilla pod , split and seeds scraped out
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 litre/1¾ pints milk
• 150g/5½oz plain chocolate, chopped into small pieces
• sugar , to taste
• freshly grated nutmeg , for dusting
Preparation method
1. Heat the vanilla pod and seeds, cinnamon stick and milk in a saucepan until boiling.
2. Remove the pan from the heat and add the chocolate pieces, stirring until the chocolate melts.
3. Whisk the hot chocolate vigorously until frothy on top and add sugar, to taste. Serve with a dusting of nutmeg.