Roverandom

Roverandom is a whimsical novella by J.R.R. Tolkien, originally told in 1925 to console his son Michael after he lost his favourite toy dog on a beach.

The story follows a young, impetuous dog named Rover, who is transformed into a toy by an irritable wizard named Artaxerxes PAM after Rover bites his trousers. As a toy, Rover is bought by a little boy (Tolkien’s son Michael, referred to as “Two”) and later lost on a sandy cove.

Found by a sand-sorcerer named Psamathos Psamathides, Rover begins a series of fantastic adventures to find the wizard who can reverse the spell. He is carried to the Moon on the back of a seagull, where he meets the Man-in-the-Moon and his own dog, and is temporarily renamed Roverandom due to his wandering. He is then transported under the Deep Blue Sea by the great whale Uin, where he encounters mer-folk, a sea-serpent, and eventually, the wizard Artaxerxes himself.

A charmingly episodic tale, Roverandom is full of wordplay and playful inventions, with a tone closer to The Hobbit and the Letters From Father Christmas than the later legendarium. Though written decades earlier, it was not published until 1998.

Dates of January 1st indicate that the exact day of the year is not known.