In a mythical or maybe just forgotten time, many creatures lived in places like the Shire, home to Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit. Hobbits are comfort loving creatures with no real sense for adventure. A knock on the door and Bilbo's life is about to change.

Calling this book children's book is like calling "Alice in Wonderland" [see "The Annotated Alice"] a children's book. Yes children can read this book and it is fun. How ever there is a lot more to this book than a cute story. And it has all the depth of the other Tolkien works with the exception of being shorter.

Many people look at this story as a prequel to "The Lord of the Rings", where in reality it is a stand-alone story with a perfectly good beginning, middle, and end. When you read "The Lord of the Rings" there is enough description to forgo "The Hobbit." Personally, I find that reading The Lord of the Rings first gave me the in-depth background to better appreciate The Hobbit.
Many of the creatures and adventures will put you on the edge of your seat. You will recognize the personalities and grow along will Bilbo as he faces new challenges as he learns to deal with life.
A good book to read first would be "The Power of Myth" by Joseph Campbell. Then you get a clearer picture of why the story progresses as it does.

Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth

I had not read The Hobbit in quite some time and was looking for a new edition when I found this version and was blown away by the different illustrations that it contains from all the versions of the book in all the languages that it has been published in since its initial release in 1937.

The background information regarding some of the sources of inspiration for Tolkien while writing the story are most enlightening. If you read every footnote, you will find the difference between each edition which may be of interest if you have more than one edition and wondered why the text is not always the same. The history behind the writing of The Hobbit is as interesting as the story itself.

I would recommend this edition to just about anyone interested in the story including those who may want to read it to young children to introduce them to Middle Earth. The great collection of illustrations on practically every page will help keep a child interested while the hear about a shy little person going "There and Back Again".

I physically looked this book over in a store before purchasing it and thought that the vast amount of side notes, pictures, and historical footnotes would be a great accompanyment to a reading of The Hobbit. However, I ended up barely glancing at them once I hit the half-way point of the book. Most of them focused on Tolkien's literary inspiration for certain stories and characters and only a handful had the cross-referencing to the Lord of the Rings which I would have preferred. They also greatly impeded the pace at which the book can be read because there are so many...and some can put you to sleep.

Minuses:
1. Too many margin comments on the revision of the novel.
2. No index in the end of the book.

Pluses:
1. Lots of drawings .
2. No other Annotated Hobbit available .

I've read many Books about J.R.R Tolkien and his creation, as well as the entire 12 books of the History of Middle Earth. The Annotated Hobbit is the best of them all. It is sheer example of a book that tells you a lot but don't confuse you with too much data.
Every person that read the Annotated Hobbit will never again treat the Hobbit as a simple children's book. The Hobbit has depth and Anderson provides us with important insights, ideas and interesting data.
The Annotated Hobbit also has the famous "missing chapter" that was included in the Hobbit's first edition. (i.e. the chapter where Gollum is showing Bilbo the way out and acts like an honest guy - Tolkien had to change that of course after he wrote the Lord of The Rings).
Read this book and you will understand a lot more about The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings and J.R.R Tolkien himself.