I hope your grandson enjoys the novel. He's younger than I was when I first read it, and I now think I was too young, but then, I didn't already know the plot, so if he's already seen the movies that may make it easier for him.
As for visualizations taking over: their effect on Tolkien fan art has already been city-flattening in its impact. Perhaps you are that rare individual so iron-minded as to be able to win at the game in which the object is not to think of an elephant, but most of us are not so equipped. I'd known the book intimately for a decade when the Bakshi movie came out, and it still took another decade to entirely erase that wretched thing from my mind; at least Jackson's visuals are more pleasant to think of. As an example of a once-notable fantasy novel which was entirely drowned by its movie and has never recovered: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
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As for visualizations taking over: their effect on Tolkien fan art has already been city-flattening in its impact. Perhaps you are that rare individual so iron-minded as to be able to win at the game in which the object is not to think of an elephant, but most of us are not so equipped. I'd known the book intimately for a decade when the Bakshi movie came out, and it still took another decade to entirely erase that wretched thing from my mind; at least Jackson's visuals are more pleasant to think of. As an example of a once-notable fantasy novel which was entirely drowned by its movie and has never recovered: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.