I think I learned to read with Asterix. Certainly, Asterix was the first thing that I can remember reading for fun. The books were always in the house when I was wee. Looking at the copyright information on these books many of them were printed when I was a baby and I suspect my dad bought them so he could read them himself. I’m glad he did as I’ve had decades of pleasure from them and now I’ve been able to share them with my own son.
Re-reading the books has been fun. At the grand old age of 48 with my young son who is 6 I’m picking up new aspects of the stories. I don’t know if I understood all the names when I was younger or all of the wordplay. The art improves over the first few books until it achieves a consistent quality. Many of my old books were badly coloured with mistakes and layer editions have corrected much of this. The newer editions look better and seem more professional. I haven’t checked in detail but I think that some of the text has been edited for modern tastes.
It’s very difficult to decide on a favourite Asterix book. I could probably pick a top ten in no particular order. I think Asterix and the secret weapon is probably my least favourite and not one I will rush to reread. Thankfully that one was borrowed from the local library.
The themes in the Asterix books are sometimes fairly adult. Asterix and the great divide about right wing and left wing politics in the divided village. With a bit of Romeo and Juliet mixed in. Obelix and co is about capitalism and marketing. There are jokes here that are aimed right at the grown-ups whilst the kids just like watching Obelix 'paf' the Romans.
And in this modern world there is a lot of Asterix product for us to consume. There have been numerous live action and animated films over the past 60 years. There is a new CGI film due to come out in December. There have been almost 20 computer games since the 1980s, none of which I had heard of. There have been different toy ranges, most recently some fairly nice Playmobil figures that my son likes to play with. We live in an Asterix paradise that 8 year old me could only have dreamed of.
It takes me somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour to read one of the books to my son. This is great quality time and it's encouraging him to read too. It feels a bit full circle for me as the love of these books led to my own love of reading. At the moment he likes to draw the Gaulish village, menhirs and Roman helmets in a pile.
While the Asterix books are perhaps not entirely timeless they still hit the mark more than 60 years after their original publication and they let my son travel with his imagination like I did when I was his age. For this, I am glad.
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