Before “The Hobbit,” my reading consisted mainly of old Biggles and Enid Blyton books, borrowed from our summer beach house at Waikanae. I knew nothing of elves or orcs, and the only dwarves I’d come across were those in the story of Snow White, and these were spelt dwarfs. Putting aside bedtime tales, “The Hobbit” was my first introduction into the world of fantasy, and made an immediate and lasting impression on this young nine-year-old reader.

After reading through the book twice, my appetite for more fantasy novels became almost insatiable. “The Hobbit” contributed towards, and was the impetus behind my reading of other fantasy books, such as C.S. Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” which was soon followed by Terry Brooks’ “Shannarra” series and then novels by David Eddings, David Gemmell, Terry Pratchett and more. Without reading “The Hobbit,” I would never have followed on and read these other authors’ works, or at the very least I might have come to them, but at a much later stage in life. Ultimately “The Hobbit” also lead me to tackling Tolkein’s “The Fellowship of the Rings,” “The Two Towers,” and “The Return of the King”.

“The Hobbit” also contributed to my understanding of the fantasy genre as not being limited to just the written word. The front cover of my copy of “The Hobbit” showed artwork that depicted Bilbo sneaking up on a sleeping Smaug, and this picture was what originally attracted me to reading the book. The enclosed maps were also studied with great interest while reading the text. A week after reading the book, my father rented for me the animated film of “The Hobbit” on video, and it was watched avidly one rainy afternoon from the living room, in my own hobbit-hole made out of chairs, blankets and cushions. When my family purchased our first computer, a Commodore 64, the one game I chose for myself was also “The Hobbit”. Now I not only understood that fantasy could live on the page, but it could also live in other media, such as in artwork and in maps and also on television and in computer games.

Later on in life I also came to understand, through “The Hobbit,” that people could connect with characters described in the fantasy genre. For me, as a young nine-year-old boy, I seemed to connect most with the character of Bilbo Baggins. Being the youngest in the family by ten years, I was always surrounded by people bigger than me; in much the same way as Bilbo was the smallest person in “The Hobbit”. However despite his diminutive size, Bilbo helped out those around him who were much bigger, and also accounted for himself well in situations of great peril and danger. To a young boy surrounded by adults, this was something to aspire to, despite the character of Bilbo Baggins being a creation of Tolkein’s fantasy world.

At some point, we all like to escape into a good book, but it seemed that I could escape further and deeper into fantasy than any other genre and “The Hobbit” contributed to this understanding of mine. Throughout my years at primary and secondary school, and occasionally beyond, “The Hobbit” would always be pulled back off the shelf and re-read in times where escaping the real world seemed like a good option. The death of a close friend in my last year at secondary school, the break-up of a teenage romance that at the time was believed to have been much more – these were all moments in my life when I reread “The Hobbit”. It seems that I came to understand the fantasy world Tolkein created, as a world where I could lose myself in its pages, and put the present to one side for a time at least.

Looking back, such was the contribution of “The Hobbit” on my understanding of the fantasy genre that without it, I believe my imagination and indeed my life itself would have been all the poorer. It seems that I have a lot to thank “The Hobbit” for.