The Round Door Hobbit Study

A free family read-aloud unit study for J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit.

Live site: https://somersetnomad.github.io/round-door/

A labyrinth of twelve illustrated rooms under the hill, joined by winding passages, with seven secret chambers behind sealed doors, eight lore keys and sixteen hidden curios to find. Each room covers one subject: narration, literature, geography, history, science, maths, art and music, cooking, character, drama, notebooking and outdoor play.

For every one of the 19 chapters there are six hands-on activities in each room (1,368 in all), extra discussion questions, a go-deeper extension for older children, and three cross-subject quests. An original narrator, the Lamplighter, guides children from room to room, and each room has its own soundscape made live in the browser.

Progress and notes save in the browser on each device. No accounts.

All illustrations are original and drawn in code; summaries, riddles and activities are written fresh. No text from the book is reproduced. Use it alongside your own copy of the book.

Files

• index.html – the page, hero and room art, and the original games
• css/deeper.css – styles for the scrolls, narrator, sound controls, palette and hidden rooms
• content/chapter-01.js … chapter-19.js – each chapter's questions, extension, quests and activities
• js/study.js – chapter scrolls, the Hearth Room additions, the ledger, passages and printing
• js/hidden-rooms.js – the Barrel Cellar, Echo Gallery, Mapmaker's Attic and Last-Light Door
• js/narrator.js – the Lamplighter and the lamp-shelf settings
• js/ambience.js – sounds of the hill, candlelight and the carried lantern

See CHANGELOG.md for what changed.