Well they got me reading by the age of six and at eight, thanks to them, I could manage the original Peter Pan and the translation of the original Pinnochio, and the dynamic duo were considerably more riveting than Treasure Island (never been able to get past chapter 1).

About to finish up the second book in the Hell Diver series. A really imaginative read of the post WWIII apocalypse.

Terry

Quote from: RoyWilliamson on 10 September 2017, 10:46:43 AM
The complete works of Janet and John.

So far I've discovered that "Janet had a ball." "John also had a ball." "Janet's ball was red." "John's ball was blue." "Janet liked to bounce her ball." "John liked to kick his." Janet and John books are an atrocity to the written word.

Janet was monorchid, so was John, Janet had orchitis, John a strangulation, Janet was a girl but identified as a boy with one ball, John was a boy but identified as a lime green Crayola crayon  ...   

Quote from: RoyWilliamson on 10 September 2017, 10:46:43 AMJanet and John books are an atrocity to the written word.

To be fair, you're not really the target market . . . You can already read!

I'm not qualified to comment on their educational value, but do note that all my kids went through school starting off with the Biff & Chip books, rather than these.

Cheers, Martyn
--

I started with Janet and John at school but could already read so found them incredibly dull. My kids had the Biff, Chip and Kipper books which seemed infinitely more interesting.

I have fond memories of a French equivalent we used at school featuring Alain, Zazou and family but, alas can no longer remember the French for the mother's admonition to Alain to "go and find your brother, see what he's doing ... and tell him to stop it."

Yeah, the Primary School I went to on Catterick Garrison got those Biff, Kipper and Chip books at some point during the late 80s, so I was only taught using Janet and John books for, probably, about a year.

We had 'Word Tins' [tobacco tins storing pieces of card that had words written on them] that were used a lot, to teach reading and how to construct sentences. I don't think you'd get away with using tobacco tins, anymore, as teaching aids. Bit like in the picture, below

Although you can buy tobacco tins from new, that are plain and have never seen a shred of tobacco. They make great dice boxes. Re. Janet and John - yes they were simple and yes they were rather repetitive, but for those of us who don't have dyslexia they worked well as basic learning is through repetition. How many gamers do you know who like to stick to the same rules because constant playing fixes the rules in their neural pathways? How many do you know who play a wide range of different rules and then get them all muddled up in a game? An awful lot to be said for repetition. Re. Ithoriel and French: at school my French teacher made me the board cleaning monitor so for four years I was asked three times a week, "Voulez vous nettoyez le tableau noir," to which I replied, "Oui, je veux  bien nettoyer le tableau noir." It is still the best French that I know, although incredibly unhelpful when trying to catch a bus in Haute Marne.

Sounds like my desperately limited Thai.

Yes, one of the many educational benefits of wargaming is the extensive knowledge of foreign languages one can gather.

Alas, there are rarely situations in which terms such as "chevau-leger lancier" or "panzer aufklarungsabteilung" can be effortlessly dropped into conversation.

I was once hosting two Austrian gamers. They were planning in German, so I sportingly pointed out I could follow a fair bit of their code. They switched to Vienna dialect....Mein Gott! I couldn't even recognise it, let alone understand it.

Curiously, they said - in excellent English - that they'd learned their Anglo-Saxon almost entirely through gaming.

Just finished 'Flight of Eagles', an account of the American Kosciusko Squadron in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-20. Good, detailed account with some fascinating photographs from the collections of some of the pilots involved. One of them was M C Cooper who was shot down, escaped from Bolshevik prison and later in life wrote, co-directed and produced 'King Kong.' Best of all, he piloted the biplane that shot the beast on the Empire State Building.

I think those planes made a brief appearance in the Polish film - The Battle of Warsaw.

Wargaming in the time and place I do I've learned to say,
"Awa'n bile yer heed ye wee daft ******!"

The equivalent to that, in certain parts of the NE of England, would be; 'H'way and gan sh*te!'

Cennwch y bant in Welsh (apparently).