Orcs? Does that make Ukes hobbits or something? I’m not 100% up on kid fantasy books.
GOOD QUESTION: I looked it up! LOL
“Ukrainians are calling Russian invaders ‘orcs.’
The word is familiar to JRR Tolkien readers as the name given to the monstrous anthropoids in his epic novel ‘The Lord of the Rings’. In all Tolkien’s stories of the wars in Middle Earth, orcs are violent, destructive In all Tolkien’s stories of the wars in Middle Earth, orcs are violent, destructive and untrustworthy, wreaking wanton havoc wherever they go. It is not hard to see why the people of Ukraine use this name for the invaders of their land.
But although Tolkien made the word his own, its origins are, as he acknowledged himself, much older. Orcs first appeared in a tenth-century glossary written in Old English (Anglo-Saxon) and, more famously, in line 112 of the Old English poem Beowulf: ‘Eotenas ond ylfe ond orcneas’.
In both cases, the word appears as an item in a list of the names of creatures. In Beowulf, it can be translated as ‘ogres and elves and monsters’.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-are-ukrainians-calling-russian-invaders-orcs-
It's no children's book DR. Look into the mirror and behold the horror of being an Orc. Note your sloped forehead, if you can, the slobber dripping down your lips, the vacant stare of your eyes. This is not normal, DR, no matter what your momma told you.
Its from Tolkien, and its not a kids fantasy book. Its Christian allegory, and a political-cultural treatise.
Like any good story, kids versions showed up. Just as you can find kids versions of the Odyssey.
The orcs were the corrupted slave-warriors of a being that had fallen entirely into the sin of pride, and is damned. The Lord of the Rings can be seen as a compendium of examples and the vast permutations of the sin of pride. The orcs are the wretches men become under the power of such a creature.
But why do I talk to you? You are uneducated, and I suspect uneducable.
Orcs and Hobbits aren’t “kids fantasy” - those are from Tolkien books and are properly “high fantasy”
“Orcs”
More like vampires, leeches, or rats.