ROVERANDOM by JRR Tolkien

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

“…off they sped along the moon's path that now stretched straight from the shore to the dark edge of nowhere. Rover did not know in the least where the moon's path led to, and at present he was much too frightened and excited to ask, and anyway he was beginning to get used to extraordinary things happening to him.”

title: Roverandom

author: JRR Tolkien

published: 1925-27

publisher: George Allen & Unwin

genre: children’s adventure fantasy novella

setting: our world, the Moon, the Kingdom of the Merfolk, the Sea, & Faeryland

main themes/subjects: an enchanted toy dog, grumpy wizards, adventures, wizards & dragons, the Moon, the valley of Happy Dreams, seagulls & spiders, mythology, Uin the oldest of the Right Whales, kingdom of the mer-folk, English beachside town, family & childhood, industrialisation & environmental destruction

premise: “Roverandom . . . began more than seventy years before it was ultimately published in 1998, as a story with a single limited purpose: to console a little boy for the loss of his toy dog. . . To cheer his son, Michael, up, Tolkien invented a story in which toy Rover was not a toy, but a real dog turned into a toy by an angry wizard; the toy then met a friendly wizard on the beach, who sent him off on various quests in order to become a real dog again, and be reunited with his one-time owner. . .” — from Tom Shippey’s Introduction to TALES OF THE PERILOUS REALM 

my thoughts:

What a cute story!! The worldbuilding is so magical. I love that they go to the moon & the sea, which are two places that are interconnected, & Roverandom makes dog friends in both places. All the characters were so lovable & hilarious too. I especially loved listening to it on audiobook because the way the narrator did all the voices plus the wholesome nature of the story & its setting in the sea for the latter half made it completely feel like I was listening to Rhys Darby reading the story to his crew in Our Flag Means Death.

Of course the writing was still very literary as one would expect from Tolkien, in fact, at times I felt that the language even reminded me a bit of Jamaica Kincaid’s writing in their similar tone of whimsy & precise, lilting diction, as well as of Lewis Carroll’s writing especially in Through the Looking-glass.

I also very much enjoyed all of the references, influences, & allusions to other mythological beings such as Skaði (referred to simply as “a giantess”), Niord, the Midgard serpent, & Uin (who felt very adjacent to the Māori god, Tangaroa).

bonus elements: It was really special to me to read this story so soon after Levi’s passing on to the Great Meadow because that is basically part of Tolkien’s mythology, so beautifully depicted in this story, too. 🥹

philosophy: “That Tolkien also included in Roverandom words such as paraphernalia, and phosphorescent, primordial, and rigmarole, is refreshing in these later days when such language is considered too ‘difficult' for young children—a view with which Tolkien would have disagreed. 'A good vocabulary,’ he once wrote (April 1959), 'is not acquired by reading books written according to some notion of the vocabulary of one's age-group. It comes from reading books above one' (Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien [1981], pp. 298-9).”

i would recommend this book to readers who enjoy lighthearted & imaginative children’s fantasy stories. this book is best read aloud at bedtime with the whole family. Or if you aren’t confident enough to do all the voices you could just play Derek Jacobi’s audiobook narration—it is excellent.

“‘Where do they all come from?' asked Roverandom, bewildered and delighted.

     ‘From their homes and beds, of course,' said the Man. ‘…Some come often, and some come seldom, and I make most of the dream. Some of it they bring with them, of course, like lunch to school, and some (I am sorry to say) the spiders make—but not in this valley, and not if I catch 'em at it. And now let's go and join the party!’”

CW // pollution & environmental destruction

season: Summer

music pairing:

further reading:

• LETTERS FROM FATHER CHRISTMAS by JRR Tolkien (1920-1945) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

• THE BOOK OF LOST TALES by JRR Tolkien

• “Progress in Bimble Town”, poem by Tolkien (1931) republished in The Collected Poems of JRR Tolkien, edited & annotated by Scull & Hammond (2024)

• THE SUMMER BOOK by Tove Jansson (1972) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Tolkien’s bookshelf—

• PETER PAN in Kensington Gardens and Peter and Wendy, by JM Barrie

• “The Sword in the Stone” (part one of THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING), by TH White

• JUST SO STORIES, by Rudyard Kipling 

• Five Children and It (1902), The Story of the Amulet (1906) & The Dragon Tamers, by Edith Nesbit

• The Wind in the Willows & The Reluctant Dragon, by Kenneth Grahame

• The Garden behind the Moon by Howard Pyle (1895)

• Sylvie and Bruno (1889-93) & Through the Looking Glass (1872) by Lewis Carroll

• ‘The Wax Doll’ by EH Knatchbull-Hugessen (1869)

• ‘The Steadfast Tin Soldier’ by Hans Christian Andersen (1838)

• A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare

• The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser (1590)

• various Norse & British mythology

• Arabian Nights (7th c. Baghdad—Abbasid; 14th c. Egypt—Mamluk)

For more works by & about JRR Tolkien, check out this post:

Click on the star ratings beside the titles I’ve read to read my reviews/thoughts about the book.

I earn commissions from the sponsored links to my shop on bookshop.org which allow me to keep my content like Book Reviews & Reading Lists free to all subscribers. <3

---

---

All graphics, images, & photography © Stop and Smell the Books unless otherwise indicated.

---

Subscribe below to see more of my favorite quotes & annotations from this book. . .