Tintin

The obsession du jour in our house is the Belgian comic Tintin. For Christmas Patrick's mom bought us a beautiful pop-up version of a Tintin story. Evie started requesting it as an every night reading (it was in French so Patrick was on the hook as the storyteller) and so Patrick decided to branch out and pick-up another one to see if she would like the stories as much with more words and less pop-up bling. It was a resounding success. Over about a week they read all of Tintin in Tibet and have in subsequent weeks moved through an Asterix and Obelix (another Belgian comic) and then Destination Moon. They are now almost finished with the Broken Ear. They have become such voracious readers of them we may have to augment our Tintin library soon. Now those who have read these before might note that they are not exactly material for a preschooler, among other offenses, Captain Haddock drinks too much whiskey in just about every volume, with the worst being the circa 1950s depiction of race and foreign cultures, but I think Patrick feels it is an important part of her heritage. :) (I think for now we'll avoid some of the more un-PC volumes like Tintin in the Congo and Tintin in America) Regardless, it is now a morning, noon and night activity in our house to sit around and read Tintin. I calculated it the other day and the two of them are spending upwards of an hour each day reading the stories. But the interest goes beyond reading time, Evie even likes to go back through them and "re-read" them herself. More than once in the past few weeks I have found her in her room giggling to herself at some aspect of the slap-stick humor from the cartoons. She tries to get me involved by bringing me the English versions we have "Mommy, you can read English can't you? Good, you can read this Tintin with me." I guess my lack of french won't keep me from comic reading/bedtime reading for long :) As Evie likes to quote "It looks like I am in the soup again"