The Book Keeper
is a short story in which Frodo Baggins falls out of The Lord of the Rings and meets one of his readers. Wilson Bridges is the weird girl who likes to read books. She meets characters from books, but they always disappear back into their stories.
The Book Keeper provides examples of:
- All of the Other Reindeer: The other children shun Wilson. She has no friends, or her only friends are fictional characters.
- An Aesop: The last paragraph delivers a moral about the need to divorce fictional characters from the real world.
- Conflict: The narrator discusses how this story must have a conflict.Something was not alright with her. In every story there is always something wrong whether it is perfectly cliche or something rather extraordinary Something has to go amiss. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to tell you this story without losing your attention.
- Gender-Blender Name: Wilson Bridges is a girl, but Wilson is usually a boy's name.
- Imaginary Friend: Frodo and the other fictional characters are imaginary friends, even if they seem real for a moment.
- In-Series Nickname: Wilson is her nickname, and Amelia is her real name.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Probably mundane. It is all but certain that Wilson imagined her encounters with those fictional characters.
- Real-World Episode: Characters from books briefly enter the real world.
- Single Tear: "One lone tear fell from [Frodo's] left eye and drifted into Wilson's red hair."
