In this section:

In this section:

A Tolkien Day in your Library or School.

In the UK, you can borrow the Tolkien Society's touring exhibition (a series of ten panels, for fitting to 'velcro'-type loop boards). A charge is made to cover transport costs.

Tolkien's texts are all great to read aloud. You could encourage people to 'read their favourite bits', or just start at page one and go on until closing time ....

Tolkien always inspires creativity: drawing and making projects can be popular (please remember to photograph them, and send us a picture for this website!)

Have a feast! (we plan to add a recipe page later).

The Lord of the Rings and Libraries

Skies of Rohan - the Idaho and Montana Tolkien Society in the USA, recently attended a statewide librarian conference held in Montana. About 250 - 300 libraries were represented at the conference, including those at city, county, elementary school, junior high school, high school and university levels. Skies of Rohan had a table in the exhibitors section that displayed a large selection of books by and about J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, the books by Christopher Tolkien, Tom Shippey and Brian Sibley, The Complete Guide to Middle-earth, The Complete Tolkien Companion, The Origins of Tolkien's Middle-earth for Dummies, etc., etc.) and several posters from the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movies.

Our intent at attending the conference was two-fold - to inform more libraries about our book donation program (we donate copies of The Lord of the Rings books and movie posters to school libraries) and to acquaint the librarians with the vast array of books written by J.R.R. Tolkien and those written about the author and his books. Our table proved to be extremely popular with the librarians. They would browse by the other tables (which were mostly booths from various book publishing companies) but literally mobbed our Tolkien table! The librarians didn't just walk by and glance at our books, they wanted to stop and talk about the impact of the books and the movies.

The librarians love what The Lord of the Rings movies have done to encourage reading. The movies may not be in the theaters any more, but the effects are still resonating. Kids at every age group saw the movies and now want to read the books. And when they've finished The Lord of the Rings, they ask the librarians for more books by Tolkien about Middle-earth. And when the students have read every book in their library by Tolkien, they ask the librarians to recommend other books that are like The Lord of the Rings. So there is this huge ripple effect being seen that is getting kids to read who have never wanted to read before and broadening the horizons of those who were readers.

The story was the same for library after library. The students loved The Lord of the Rings and were constantly checking the books out and looking for other books on Middle-earth. Most libraries only had one or two copies of The Lord of the Rings and those copies were typically worn and battered from so much use. Most librarians were familiar with The Hobbit, but didn't realize there were so many other books written by Tolkien or about Middle-earth. After seeing and looking through the books we had displayed, librarian after librarian said they would love to add more of the additional books to their library. They would pick up various books and speak of how much the kids in their library would love this book or that book.

Unfortunately, the budgets for most of the libraries was extremely limited. Especially for those libraries located in small towns and communities. After speaking with so many enthusiastic librarians, we here at Skies of Rohan, have vowed to find a way to double the number of books we donate to school libraries over the coming school year. It would be a wonderful thing if other smials and branches of The Tolkien Society could find a way to adopt a local library and see if they could use another copy of The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit or one of the many other wonderful books about Middle-earth.

Patty Howerton

Skies of Rohan - the Idaho and Montana Tolkien Society