Tintin Forums

Hello! I was wondering what order you think the Tintin books should be read in.

Here's my idea for an order:

1. The Crab with the Golden Claws

2. The Shooting Star

3. Cigars of the Pharaoh

4. The Blue Lotus

5. The Secret of the Unicorn

6. Red Rackham's Treasure

7. The Broken Ear

8. King Ottokar's Sceptre

9. The Seven Crystal Balls

10. Prisoners of the Sun

11. The Black Island

12. Destination Moon

13. Explorers on the Moon

14. Land of Black Gold

15. Tintin in America

16. The Calculus Affair

17. Tintin in Tibet

18. The Red Sea Sharks

19. Flight 714 to Sydney

20. The Castafiore Emerald

21. Tintin and the Picaros

That looks like a reasonable order to me, though I would put

"Cigars of the Pharaoh" and
"The Blue Lotus" at the top of the list.

It is in those books that Tintin first meets the Thompsons and that Herge starts to develop his supporting cast.

Ideally, you should read them in the actual order of publication, but then your list does put the best at the top, so go for it.

Yes, mct16, I thought of putting Cigars of the Pharaoh and Blue Lotus first, but I lend them out to kids I know, and I've found that they seem to get a lot more interested when they meet Captain Haddock right off. That said, some of the children that love Tintin the most started with Cigars or King Ottokar's Sceptre.