Roverandom by J R R Tolkien edited by Christina Scull and Wayne G Hammond HarperCollins, $185 When I first read The Hobbit and its three-part sequel, The Lord of the Rings, in the late 1970s, these books were, well, just books: there was no introduction, not even an author's note. That is not to say that John Ronald Reuel Tolkien's work was not taken seriously. Though The Hobbit was published in 1937 as a children's tale - The Fellowship of the Rings and The Two Towers came out in 1954, Return of the King in 1955 - his fantasy had a firmer grip on his grown-up fans' imagination: 'Frodo Lives!' graffiti was reportedly painted on subway walls in the United States; closer to home, in Malaysia, I once saw an apple-green Volkswagen beetle pass, the name 'Bilbo' written in large, fancy purple script on its two doors. But works published posthumously - Tolkien died in 1973 - began to feature an earnest introduction, and notes, explaining the whys and wherefores of the works' coming into being, the mythology that inspired them, and more. Then there were the scholarly 'reference books', detailing the 'history' of Middle-Earth, by the youngest Tolkien son, Christopher. Which brings us to Roverandom. It is treated with reverence, with a 14-page introduction giving the background to the creation of this children's story, and detailed notes explaining the meaning of certain episodes - or pointing out Tolkien's delightfully rich wordplay and the unexpected turns of phrases - and tying the story to incidents in the Tolkien family or events in Britain. It all reads like an attempt by editors Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond to lift Roverandom to serious fiction, give it Hobbit-status. Yet children will probably not be bothered if they do not know how the tale evolved; ditto for most adults. Roverandom first came into being in the summer of 1925, when Tolkien, his wife Edith, sons John (nearly eight), Michael (nearly five) and Christopher (not yet one) were holidaying at Filey, a town on the Yorkshire coast in northern England. Playing on the beach one day, Michael lost a beloved miniature toy dog, painted black and white. The boys and their father spent the next day searching in vain for it. To console Michael and to explain the toy's disappearance, Tolkien started the tale of a live dog, Rover, who angers a wizard called Artaxerxes, and is changed into a toy which is bought by a woman for her son (she has three). Rover, like Michael's toy, is mislaid on the beach - except he is rescued by a sand-sorcerer, Psamathos Psamathides, who orders a seagull, Mew, to fly Rover to the Man-in-the-Moon, presumably to get him out of Artaxerxes' way. The Man-in-the-Moon already has a dog called Rover, so he renames the toy dog Roverandom. The two have great adventures, but they also anger a moon-dragon, the Great White Dragon, so much that it forgets to create the next eclipse of the moon. Then the Man-in-the-Moon sends Roverandom to the depths of Earth's oceans to find Artaxerxes - who has married one of the sea-ruling Merking's daughters - and persuade him to change Roverandom back to a real dog. If you are expecting another Hobbit, you will be disappointed. Roverandom lives up to its genre: while engaging, it is still a tale written for children. Do not try to read between the lines. The tale is charming read out loud: it has a chatty tone, Tolkien adding little asides and comments; the prose is peppered with near-homonyms (Persia and Pershore), alliterations ('yaps and yelps, and yammers and yowls'), and, as the editors point out, unexpected turns of phrases. Tolkien drew five illustrations to go with Roverandom, and these are admirable, especially the colourful Gardens of the Merking's Palace, with its delicate, yet sharply delineated, details. He submitted the story for publication just as The Hobbit was going to print, but it was not accepted. He apparently added or changed details over the years. Perhaps, if he had the time to rework Roverandom, Tolkien might have lifted it to mythical level. But perhaps not: while it is a charming tale, written by a master storyteller, it did not carry the ring of a future epic.