This Washington Post review of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Children of Hurin opens with this lede:

If anyone still labors under the delusion that J.R.R. Tolkien was a writer of twee fantasies for children, this novel should set them straight. A bleak, darkly beautiful tale played out against the background of the First Age of Tolkien's Middle Earth, The Children of Hurin possesses the mythic resonance and grim sense of inexorable fate found in Greek tragedy.

After reading the Lord of the Rings novels, after seeing the Peter Jackson movies, could anyone -- anyone -- really think that Tolkien's works were "fantasies for children"?