Roverandom is the Tolkien children’s book featuring a dog who becomes a toy on the Moon. Tolkien wrote the story in 1925 after his young son Michael lost a favorite toy dog while on holiday. The tale follows Rover, a real dog transformed by a wizard, through a series of adventures.
In the story, Rover travels through unusual places, including the Moon and the sea. Tolkien created the narrative as a way to console Michael, turning a small family disappointment into imaginative fiction. The manuscript remained unpublished during Tolkien’s lifetime.
Roverandom was finally published in 1998, edited by Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond. It is sometimes confused with Mr. Bliss, another illustrated children’s story by Tolkien, but the two books have different origins and plots. Roverandom also belongs to the group of posthumously published works that show Tolkien’s family storytelling outside the main Middle-earth legendarium.