The Fellowship of Faithful Readers

Amid the hordes of fanatic Middle Earth fans was a less particular crowd invited to three special screenings of “The Fellowship of the Ring” Wednesday at the AMC Norwalk cinemas.

As a reward for reading the first book in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, 1,000 middle and high school students from Compton, Long Beach, Norwalk and elsewhere in Los Angeles County were treated to the movie. Many had only recently heard of hobbits and goblins. Some could not quite remember author J.R.R. Tolkien’s name, calling him “that guy.”

The students were treated like movie stars, walking a red carpet while parents cheered and waved signs. Inside, they got popcorn, soda and a hot dog, as well as a few speeches from local dignitaries.

“Did you read the book?” Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe called out. Roars of “Yes!”

“Did you write a report?” he shouted. More roars of “Yes.”

“Did you have fun doing it?” he cried.

Emphatic roars of “No!”

“Oh, well, ask a question, you get an answer,” Knabe said, shrugging.

Predictably, some students loved the book, others did not. Some struggled through its elvish poetry, others read nonstop, from the green fields of the Shire, where hobbits live, to Lothlorien, home of tree-dwelling elves.

Motivated by California’s poor reading scores--the state ranks 49th out of 50 states, according to the National Literacy Center--Wini Jackson of the Los Angeles County probation office came up with the reading project.

She had considered “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” but decided the young wizard had no concrete moral goals.

“The hobbit has a purpose,” Jackson said, referring to the Fellowship’s central character, Frodo Baggins. “His purpose was to destroy the ring, to destroy evil. Now most of our young people don’t have a purpose. When I ask them, ‘What do you want to be?’ they say, ‘I dunno know, hang with my homies.’ ”

She also hoped that the mythical saga of good versus evil would inspire children, and she persuaded companies to donate books and theater tickets.

The story is simple: Nine companions set out to destroy a ring of evil, pitting themselves against nine fearsome wraiths. If the wraiths return the ring of evil to their master, he will rule the world forever. If the companions destroy it, the world remains free.

The quest, in some ways, mirrors the dangers kids face on the streets.

“They live with terrorism every day of their lives,” Jackson said. “To get to school and home they have to worry about getting shot every day.”

Published in 1954, Tolkien’s masterpiece has been a worldwide bestseller and laid the foundation for contemporary fantasy epics. Devotees have created entire genealogies for the characters, and international linguistic experts ponder the influence of Finnish and Welsh on Tolkien’s crafting of his own languages.

In Compton, however, a rigorously literal reading of “The Fellowship” left several seventh- and eighth-grade students appalled.

“This is ebonics; it’s hobbit ebonics!” said Linda Hall, 12, a student at St. Timothy’s School. “I mean you can’t say drownded. It should be drowned. These people did not have the type of education available to them that we have today.”

Word by word, Hall and other students analyzed the book.

“They had a party because when the hobbit was 111 years old, they said he was eleventy-one,” said Kevin Moore, 13. “Eleventy-one! What kind of word is that? I’d say this book is somewhere between weird and fun.”

Regardless of the linguistic roadblocks in the book, most seemed to enjoy the movie.

The students clapped whenever valor won out over cowardice. They winced when the forces of evil gained ground. Several cheered when a hobbit smoked his pipe and pronounced it “the finest weed in the South Farthing!”

At its end, the movie was favorably pronounced to be “tight,” but many were dismayed to learn that the sequel will not be out for a year.

“I really liked the book, but I thought the movie was better,” said Eric Serna, 18, of Dominguez High School in Compton. “I never read a whole novel complete before, and now I need the second book.”

His friend Yair Solis, 17, agreed. “This was the best book I ever read. If the school doesn’t get me the second book, I’m going to have to call Barnes and Noble. No way I can wait a whole year to find out what happens.”