Saturday, March 8, 2014

SpReAd The Love Book Challenge: I'm Reeeally Sorry, Mr. Tolkien

My daughter and I talked a lot about the SpReAd The Love Children's Book Challenge in the weeks leading up to it and she kind of went back and forth about whether or not she'd write anything, though she was all for donating a copy of her all-time favorite book, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli, to the same Pediatric Floor library that's getting a copy of Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. A donation is a donation and that's the heart of what we're doing here so it's all good.

Then she came home and announced that her class is reading The Hobbit. THEN she decided to tell me the first chapter in eleven-year-old-ese. Like I could resist that, right? So, with apologies to Mr. Tolkien and any purists who might have come across this post, here is my eleven-year-old's retelling of Chapter One of The Hobbit.

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All right, Chapter One. The little Bilbo Hobbit dude is sitting there outside his Hobbit hole when this old fart Gandalf walks up. Gandalf is all, "Wanna go on an adventure, Bilbo dude?" and Bilbo is like, "NO!" Well, little Bilbo dude walks back inside and all of a sudden he hears this noise on his door and there's Gandalf and Bilbo is like, "What is that old fart doing to my door? I just painted it!"

So then Bilbo dude is sitting there pouring himself a bowl of, I don't know, Cheerios or something for dinner, okay, and he hears this other noise at his door and opens it and there's this old dwarf dude. Old dwarf dude just invites himself in like, "Lalala, I'm walking into your house! I'm breaking and entering!" So then a couple more dwarves get there and then finally Gandalf shows up with the rest of the dwarf peeps. And they eat all of Bilbo dudes' food! And then they start singing this crazy song and throwing his dishes around and he freaks out! He's like, "What are you doing? Put that down!" Seriously, the dwarves are like [her little brother and sister] times a hundred.

Then Thorin shows up and everyone's like a big old crazy party. Well then everyone starts talking about this adventure and Bilbo is like, "What the what?" So Gandalf tells Bilbo and Thorin that Bilbo is going to be the burglar on their "adventure" and Bilbo is all, "NO!" [note: this NO is said with such vehemence that the dog is now hiding under the kitchen table] Well then all the dwarves start doubting little Bilbo dude because he's short because, you know, they have to make the short dude feel bad about himself to make THEMSELVES [emphasis definitely hers] feel bigger or something. Well, he's finally like, "Nope!" and goes off to bed. So then the dwarves are singing and he's all like, "Hobbit trying to sleep here!"

Okay, the next morning Bilbo dude wakes up and hopes the dwarves were all a dream. Unfortunately, they weren't. He sees the big mess they made with breakfast and after he cleans all of that up the poor little dude tries to regain his sanity. Kind of like when [her little brother and sister] make you breakfast. That old fart Gandalf shows up again and is all like, "Did you see the contract?" And Bilbo is like, "What contract?" because I swear he thinks it's a contract on him the way he's so freaked out. Then Gandalf insults his dusting and tells him where the contract is. And suddenly he must have completely lost his mind because he decides he wants to go! He runs after them so fast that he even forgot his hankie-thingie and he freaked out about that but they run into Gandalf again and he gives him a hankie-thingie. Poor Bilbo. I'm kind of afraid for the guy's sanity.

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She is so my kid. She says to tell you all thank you for supporting this challenge and reading her weirdness. :) 



15 comments:

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    1. Thanks! She definitely had the giggles telling me!

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  2. Lovely. The eleven-year-olds of today obviously have got something on Tolkien. :)

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    1. If by something you mean smart aleckness then YES!

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  3. Hilarious! God forbid if my almost 11 yr old reads it, he might say the same thing which would thoroughly upset the almost 16 yr, we'd have one big ruckus!

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  4. And as it so happens the almost 16yr old, (sorry birthdays are less than a month away!) he's been thinking about reading it again, I may just have to read this out loud, he wouldn't get upset if it came from me though :)

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    1. She says thanks and 11-year-olds have to stick together!

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  5. Your kid is adorable.

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    1. Thanks, alyssa! I definitely agree with you!

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  6. I love when a child exhibits the qualities a parent has so lovingly passed on to them. Good job, Mom! ;) As my own two smartalecks like to remind me with great regularity ... the rotten fruit doesn't fall far from the diseased tree. *giggle*

    By the way, hubby laughed through the reading of this. He loved her take on it. I believe his exact words were, "Nailed it." ;)

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    1. Oh, yeah, she definitely got her loopiness from me. :) And she says thanks!

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Thanks for commenting!