Tintin Forums

In the past year I've heard of two events in which "Tintin" encouraged people to read.

Some friends were staying with my parents and my mother was told how their 10-year-old was failing to appreciate books, spending all his time playing. My mother showed him my old collection of Tintin books and he got hooked on them, enjoying them so much that he insisted on staying at the house and reading rather than go to the beach and play.

Later I visited some elderly friends. When I first met them, the husband had told me that he was illiterate. During my most recent visit however I noticed the DVDs of the Tintin Ellipse-Nelvana TV series and was rather surprised, thinking that it was not really their sort of thing. He explained to me that he had once read a Tintin story which was published in some American magazine and that it encouraged him to learn to read even if his reading is still a bit limited. His wife had bought the DVDs as a sort of reminder.

And they say comics cannot teach you anything.

I'm sure you are right mct16, Tintin was one of the first books I read apart from comics like Beano when I was about 5 or 6, and it is pretty obvious that the text in Tintin is on a higher level. They are a great way to brush up on other languages too; I read mine in French, and am contemplating trying Italian Tintin as a way of learning the language to help for a stay with an Italian family happening soon!

mat

A follow-up on my opening post: when the same family again visited my parents, their son rushed into my old room and started reading through my old book collection. Not just Tintin but also old Richard Scary books and books on real-life subjects such as spies, outlaws and mysteries.

I met him recently and he told of how he was building up his own Tintin and Asterix collection.