Rosemary says: "At school we are all busy putting together our portfolios to apply for co op placements this summer and one of my teachers keeps talking about ‘making art you want to get hired to do’. Well I would love to be hired to illustrate a kids book one day and man would I ever love to work on a Tolkien adaptation!"

Read more in Family at Boing Boing

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

TAGS: art family

Read these next

Skittles sorting machine, version 3

David LaFerriere's sandwich bag art

robuluz

That is brilliant.
http://twitter.com/incarnedine_v Dan Hibiki

Eh.. too derivative of the movies.
- robuluz
  
  Yeah, school girl who has executed an interesting original idea with a clearly commercial level of skill, couldn’t you re-imagine the characters as well?
  - http://twitter.com/incarnedine_v Dan Hibiki
    
    Well, yeah. Remember before the films? Every hobbit book looked different and the only things they had in common were elements explicitly described in the books.
    After the first movie every hobbit and burrow and wizard started looking the same.
    
    Also the key difference between professional and student work is a pay check and why are you phrasing that being a girl is somehow a bad thing?
    - robuluz
      
      My point is that the concept and execution are excellent for student level, and you pissing all over it because it doesn’t meet your exacting standards is very internet of you.
      
      why are you phrasing that being a girl is somehow a bad thing?
      
      I’m phrasing that picking on school girls is a bad thing, and phrasing that with some level of irony. But if it suits your political sensibilities better, you may substitute ‘school kid’ for ‘school girl’, and reconsider at your leisure.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  I might agree… if Bilbo had ever cracked a smile in the new film. Book Bilbo is a cheerful, pudgy, little guy; Film Bilbo looks like he has an ulcer.
  - Hanglyman
    
    Film Bilbo is pretty much a tiny, hairy-footed Arthur Dent, at least for the first third of the movie.
    - penguinchris
      
      Martin Freeman, who I quite like, does seem to be a bit typecast in this type of role – he did of course actually play Arthur Dent in the 2005 film, and his Dr. Watson in Sherlock shares many similar traits.
      
      I suppose it isn’t fair to call it typecasting since he has played many other types of characters, but those three roles are easily his best known (as well as his role in the original UK The Office, of course).
- Ramone
  
  Kinda missing the point–the Golden Books that have come out in years are all based on licenses, so the film-look of these pieces are intended to keep that theme.
Andrew Singleton

Were it not for Chris Tolkien I’m sure this might be doable.

C’mon! I’d buy it for my niece. Gotta get ‘em on the classics early.
sockdoll

I love this. I grew up with Little Golden Books and read them to my own son as well.
Heartfruit

I really like how the artist made the cover look worn and well loved.
JhmL

Nice. Not that it has anything to do with this, but it reminded me of: http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20121221
pa2rick

See, this is one of the reasons I loathe Jackson’s Tolkien films: they have largely supplanted the books in the common imagination. The above is a children’s book version of THE MOVIE, not the book (which is titled “The Hobbit: or There and Back Again”. UGH.
http://www.redowl.ca jaddle

http://io9.com/5968792/the-middle-earth-illustrators-jrr-tolkien-lovedand-the-ones-he-abhorred has some illustrations from a real Golden Book version of (an excerpt of) The Hobbit. Tolkien was not a fan.
http://www.facebook.com/lou.messing Lou Messing

This reminds me of an old read-along record that I just loved as a kid. It looked like this:

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/shop/books/audio-books/the-hobbit-read-along-record-and-book-748815

The hobbit reimagined as a Golden Book

Read more in Family at Boing Boing

Read these next