When we were kids, we used to go to my cousin’s house and read the books out loud together. There were eight of us – four in my family and four in the Deshler family. Each person would get to be a character in the book - if you know the books, there’s Tintin, Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus, Thompson, and Thomson and various other characters. Tintin has this little white dog, Snowy. I used to get to be Snowy. There weren’t many lines, just barking and thinking, but I thought it was the best part. Of course, I was probably given the part because I was the youngest and couldn’t be counted on to be able to read all the words of the other characters.
My cousins had all of the Tintin books. I don’t know if they discovered them when they were in Africa* but they started the collection and then we had them at home too. My favorite of the books was either Destination Moon or Explorers on the Moon. What I liked best about these two books were Thompson and Thomson (the twins) - they took some pills for motion sickness or something and their hair grew incredibly long and turned all sorts of different colors (like the “horse of a different color” in the Wizard of Oz). (Funny what we like when we’re young.)
At some point in time, I would like to collect all the Tintin books for my grandchildren to read and enjoy.
So that’s my second and final FTF for 2010. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!
*My cousins lived in Africa for a while back in the early 60s because my uncle worked for the University of Maryland and was doing some work there. You can google Walter Deshler and you might find something about what he was doing. (I honestly have no idea what he was doing there - perhaps I’ll google him, too.)
4 comments:
I think I read some of these books too when I was a child! Talk about bringing back vague but fabulous childhood memories. Some of the older books are the best - great moral messages in them too. We were talking about childhood books at work this week. Australia was very influenced by English culture and Enid Blyton was huge here.
Your uncle was a geographer. It looks like he did a lot of mapping of Uganda. How exciting to have lived in another country for some time. And why dont I have anyone on google in my family!
Thankyou for playing again this week Thea. I hope you'll be back in 2011. I enjoy reading about your favourite things.
I don't remember reading Tin Tin but I know my sister loves all the books, and had them for her boys when they were younger.
Merry Christmas Thea.
Oh, that's a beautiful memory.
What a wonderful story. Thanks for sharing.
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