“Are you one of the actors?” asks James, a confused nine-year-old pointing his knitted brow in my direction. “Is that why you have that accent?”
“Unfortunately,” I tell him, “I’m just British – you must be mistaking me for one of the elves.” The boy looks ready for an adventure in his dark green cloak, parted by the cardboard hilt of a toy sword sticking out of his waistband. I notice my own outfit – the grubby seams of my once-beige shorts, and the orange crust encasing my once-black sneakers. Six weeks of camping have left me looking and smelling more like an orc.
Celebrated around the world, “Hobbit Day” takes place every year on September 22, the birthday of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, two of J. R. R. Tolkien’s most iconic hairy-footed characters. These beloved, unassuming heroes, who first appeared in The Hobbit in 1937 and The Fellowship of the Ring in 1954, continue to inspire generations of readers and movie lovers everywhere. They’ve taught millions of fans that the greatest deeds sometimes come from the most unlikely heroes.
Carmen and I joined the Hobbit Day festivities at Wayne County Public Library’s main branch in Wooster, Ohio, alongside a fellowship of librarians and library patrons. A life-size cardboard cutout of Legolas watched us as we walked into a large, round room at the back of the library. Cloaked children and flower crown-wearing adults sat at numerous tables, filling the room with the sound of scribbling pencils and excited chatter. Heads poked out of small tents, donuts plopped into brown paper bags, cups filled up with auburn-colored apple juice.
“Welcome!” called a voice – I started, glancing back at Legolas suspiciously. I noticed the two librarians to my left, who introduced themselves as Jodi and Meg. “People can learn from hobbits,” Meg said, “and the world they inhabit. Imagination and adventure are great for kids, but Tolkien is for everyone.”
Jodi and Meg told us that some of the library’s regulars are avid Tolkien fans. “One couple just had a baby named Rory,” Jodi said, “but they would have named him ‘Elanor’ if he’d been a girl.” If you didn’t know, Elanor is the first daughter of everybody’s favorite sidekick, Samwise Gamgee.
Recognizing these community members’ love for all things Middle-earth, Jodi read The Hobbit for the first time in order to plan the program. “The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are grand, epic adventures,” Jodi said, “those are the best stories! And they appeal to older kids too. Like the stories, there’s something for everyone in our celebration today. We’ve got crafts – decorate a toy sword, use our codex to write a name card in Elvish, make a flower crown! We have a costume competition, a scavenger hunt, and a bunch of Middle-earth-themed foods to try too.”
Next we met Luke, who was sitting at the codex table decorating a small wooden sword with his toddler. “She loves Storytime at this place,” Luke told me, after explaining that the crisscross, swirling characters he had penned onto his fake blade read “Luke’s sword.” “A few weeks ago we watched Despicable Me. She wasn’t interested – didn’t pay attention the whole movie, except the part where Gru reads a picture book to his daughters. Then she was transfixed! We love it here. My daughter gets to make friends, learn to read, and have a lot of fun – all for free! So here we are again, always coming back to awesome events like this because we know they’ll be fun, engaging, and thoughtfully organized.”
Two of the community’s biggest “Tolkienites” (referred to as “Ringers” in other parts of the world) are Eva and Didi, who told us that they were going to all of the Hobbit Day events at every library they could get to. Avid lovers of all things Lord of the Rings, they had already been to two other public libraries in and around Wooster that morning in costume. Carmen and I agreed that they looked ready for a quest. Didi’s olive-green cloak was secured with her very own emerald-colored leaf brooch. Eva wore a pink floral dress with billowing white sleeves, which had once belonged to her great-grandmother.
“We’ve read every single book,” Eva told us, “even The Silmarillion. My favorite is The Two Towers, but Didi likes The Fellowship of the Ring. They’re magic. We love talking about all of the little details together.”
Carmen and I joined Eva and Didi for the treasure hunt, which took place across the children’s section of the library. Clue one: “A hobbit sits and smokes with ease, find this where one takes their teas.” The search began – the library kitchen? No. A bench? Nope. Working as a team, we scoured the mini Middle-earth until Carmen happened upon a large, semicircular window in the library’s main reading room. Built in the shape of a sprawling tree, a wooden bookshelf wrapped around the top of the glass arch. The tree was home to a family of plush squirrels and cuddly toy robins. It was decorated with auburn autumnal leaves, collected from the library’s garden. And sure enough, there, resting against the trunk, was an image of Bilbo Baggins smoking his pipe.
We continued our quest, solving clues such as “Beware thief – my breath is fire, yet treasure calls to your desire” (Smaug’s lair, represented by a small canvas tent in the library’s meeting room) and “In places of light, where elves have walked and left behind” (inside a lamp). Eventually, the adventure ended with our very own precious treasure tucked away in our pockets – a ring, forged in the fires of Mount Doom (3D printed at the library earlier in the week).
Wayne County Public Library’s Hobbit Day worked because Jodi, Meg and their colleagues understood what Tolkien’s world offered: not just dragons, elves and riddles, but fellowship, bravery and the thrill of entering another world together. But the librarians are only free to do this work, in part, because of Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s strong stance against censorship in public libraries. As we discuss in our article on Wayne County Library and the Amish community, DeWine vetoed a clause in the state’s 2025 draft budget that would have made library funding contingent on libraries sequestering materials related to “sexual orientation or gender identity or expression.”
Elsewhere in the United States, books like The Lord of the Rings have been deemed to be inappropriate for children and teenagers like Eva and Didi due to local censorship laws. In Idaho Falls, Carmen and I noticed The Hobbit on display on an adult-only floor of the library, where we were asked for our IDs at the entrance. This follows from Idaho’s House Bill 710, which mandates public and school libraries to restrict access to materials deemed “harmful to minors.” It allows private citizens to file lawsuits for monetary awards against libraries that fail to relocate restricted books to adult-only sections, and has led one library to become America’s first adult-only public library.
Library Director Jennifer Schatzer told us that the threat of censorship is never far from Wayne County Public Library’s doors. “We are always waiting for the chips to fall,” she said. “We also never know whether we will get federal funding from one year to the next, so the library’s freedoms and the library itself are always under threat. But Wooster loves its library. One of my proudest moments was our reopening, after we moved into the new building. Hundreds of people came – I had to hold the door open for over an hour so everybody could pour in. It shows that we mean something real to this community, and we should protect that.”
~
Oliver Jakes
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This is another utterly brilliant essay for the ALP that deserves more publication in a major journal, or in a collected series on this ongoing topic in a book. These two authors are truly riveting, accomplished investigative journalists.
We earnestly need this high quality of writing and analysis at this crucial moment in our history!
Dennis Dalton, professor emeritus of Political Science, Barnard College, Columbia University
To think that libraries are under threat of law suits and censorships seems so absurd. Stories and information like this are so important to disseminate; as too, are the stories of Bilbo, Gandalf, and all the magical characters of Middle Earth