I love Tolkien.

His trilogy has become one of the high water greats of modern literature in the 20th century. Everybody read it. Everybody loved it.

I wanted to read everything he wrote. I just didn’t have time. I was teaching school, reading the required list, reading student papers and commenting at length, getting too little sleep. I read slowly. I don’t skim for coverage, the gist that would yield a high score on a comprehension test.

I can’t even imagine a reading test that could verify “comprehension” with a “passing score.” If you get less than 100%, you haven’t read.

I was teaching fifth grade at Longfellow Elementary in Pasadena. The school was nice to me and gave me the top reading group. Probably because I was an English major in college. Probably because I was already publishing things. Probably because I had friends in high places.

I shared my enthusiasm for Tolkien with my class of precocious fifth graders. I referenced the “Ring Trilogy” with a nod to Wagner. These kids were fifth graders and hadn’t broken into the teen years, but they all could read. They all could think. Given half a chance, children can join adults at the table. The words in the books are the same for everybody.

So I added The Hobbit to the list of required reading. We read it in class. They read it at home. They took notes, drew pictures, wrote Hobbit poems.

We built a grand display in the classroom, a Tree of Knowledge, rooted in Middle Earth, with branches in the present. We hung Hobbit ornaments like a Christmas tree, the children’s illustrations, and their poems, signed, so everyone could know who wrote them. It was a crowd pleaser at Open House.

I began our introduction to The Hobbit with what academics might call an anticipatory set.

“We’re going to read The Hobbit. I think, though I haven’t bothered to confirm it, that Tolkien changed his intention when he was writing it.

“He started out, as he says, writing a children’s story for the family. It has the vocabulary, the feel of freshness and excitement, that you expect in children’s literature.

“But very soon, I think, the story took over. He was no longer writing a story just for children. He himself was carried away by the saga, and everyone came together on the journey.

“Now, students, I want you to see if you can tell when that transition occurs. Hint: It’s very early in the story. Identify the passage or context, make your case, prepare to defend your judgment with evidence from the text, and we’ll see if we can reach a class consensus. There may be individual variations, some of you will notice something earlier than your peers, but let’s see if we can reach a common consensus that has a core of agreement. Democracy in the classroom, eh? Where we don’t have to be identical, and all voices are heard. And the goal is that we all enjoy the story.”

Well, my students made me proud.

And then, “They should make a movie.”

Of course. Good story, with good directors, designers, appropriate actors, can lift the words from the page. They can fill the air we breathe and expand the world we live in, another world parallel to our own, that lets us live a larger life.

Then the slap in the face. A cartoon. Bakshi, whom I’d never heard of, and how did he get the movie rights?

Cartoon “cute.” I don’t want to see my beloved characters presented that way. Chubby grins, and too much emphasis on hairy feet.

Where’s the scope and dimension? I don’t like being pandered to. This was worse than Disney.

My students cried, “Foul!” and “He’s polluting our minds with images. He’s taken the depth out of the story. He’s given us cheap fast food with no nourishment. That’s child abuse!”

Pretty good for fifth graders, wouldn’t you agree?