Roverandom is J.R.R. Tolkien’s published children’s story about a toy dog outside Middle-earth.
Tolkien wrote Roverandom in 1925 after his son Michael lost a small toy dog on a beach at Filey in Yorkshire. The story follows Rover, a toy transformed into a real dog, through adventures involving the Moon, the sea, and magical beings. Tolkien originally told it as a story for his children rather than as part of the mythology of Middle-earth.
The work was published posthumously in 1998, edited by Christopher Tolkien. It is sometimes grouped with Tolkien’s shorter imaginative fiction, including Farmer Giles of Ham and Leaf by Niggle, but those stories have different settings and plots. Roverandom’s origin in a lost toy makes it one of the clearest examples of Tolkien turning a family incident into fantasy.