Hergé
Books by Hergé
“Tintin is very nice because this is a book where what is written is connected to pictures. So you have a guy with a gun or driving your car. Even though you don’t understand everything, you can follow the story. Comic books are pretty helpful like that and I used them a lot to learn English. What is also very interesting about comic books is that it’s mostly dialogue. When you want to learn languages, you find lots of dialogues for beginners, but then when you read books, most of them don’t have much dialogue. It’s like a different language. When you learn languages, you really need questions and answers. It’s a very specific kind of sentence and grammar. For that comic books like Tintin are very helpful.” Read more...
The Best Books for Learning French
Vincent Serrano-Guerra, Linguist
“There’s a lot of adventure and snow and a cute little dog called Snowy.” Read more...
The Best Graphic Novels for Eight Year Olds
Helen, Children
The Blue Lotus
by Hergé
The Blue Lotus is the most important Tintin adventure. It’s a masterpiece. Tintin is immersed in extreme realism – Shanghai exactly as it was in 1934
“King Ottokar’s Sceptre which is one of four or five of the Tintin books which really hit home in Belgium. This one hits home because you have lots of amusing stuff at the beginning about Brussels and different sorts of rather foolish intellectuals and scientists. There’s a sense of some sort of fraud being perpetrated but it’s difficult to work out what it is. Then it becomes clear, in the latter half of the book, that it’s about a character called King Ottokar who rules a country called Syldavia which is somewhere in the Balkans.” Read more...
Martin Conway, Historian
Interviews where books by Hergé were recommended
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1
The Sorrow of Belgium
by Hugo Claus -
2
Belgium and the Congo, 1885-1980
by Guy Vanthemsche -
3
King Ottokar’s Sceptre
by Hergé -
4
The Legacy of Nazi Occupation: Patriotic Memory and National Recovery in Western Europe, 1945-1965
by Pieter Lagrou -
5
Souvenirs Pieux (Dear Departed)
by Marguerite Yourcenar
The best books on Belgium, recommended by Martin Conway
The best books on Belgium, recommended by Martin Conway
With a keen awareness of the vicissitudes of history and an ironic sense of national identity, Belgium is a country others could learn a lot from. Historian Martin Conway recommends some books to better understand Belgium/België/Belgique.
The best books on Tintin, recommended by Michael Farr
The adventures of Tintin are some of the bestselling books of all time, translated from French into languages across the globe, and still in bookshops nearly a century since they first started being published. Their stories, their humour, their characters continue to delight. Here, Tintinologist Michael Farr explains why the Tintin books have such enduring appeal and how their creator, Hergé, came to write them.
The Best Graphic Novels for Eight Year Olds, selected by Helen
“And what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversation?” Eight-year-old Helen feels the same. Here she tells us why reading graphic novels is fun, relaxing and definitely not for babies – and recommends her current five favourites.
The Best Books for Learning French, recommended by Vincent Serrano-Guerra
In spite of all the online ads promising to teach you a new language in a matter of minutes, learning a language takes time and commitment—and motivation is critical. Here Vincent Serrano-Guerra, author of a book for learning French that focuses on the 20,000 words that are the same in French and English, explains how best to set about it and recommends some books that’ll also get you familiar with French culture.
