During the boring drive from Opelika up US-431 to Anniston, I listened to Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities via the Amazon Audible app on my Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 12.2 tablet. Listening to my favorite novel of all-time as opposed to reading the words myself is a bit of a different experience and I actually came away feeling a little wiser on certain themes and motifs in the story. It’s a far cry from where I was when I first discovered the novel in October 1995, when I didn’t understand anything past the whole Charles Darnay-Charles St. Evrémonde identity change thing. That brings me to this week’s moment in the Flashback Friday series: the Wishbone television series.
How I first came across this moment? I first discovered the series when it premiered in October 1995 on PBS Kids. I would tune in at 5:30pm, right after Reading Rainbow.
What it meant to me then? Back then, in my last days as a 10-year-old, I thought the series was just what I needed. I was a 5th grader at Elyton Elementary and some of the stories covered in the series were topics of discussions in Mrs. Hardy’s class…like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Rip Van Winkle. In the years immediately following—my middle school years—I read a number of the books I learned about on the series for the first time, including A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, Don Quixote, and Treasure Island.
What it means to me now? The show stopped producing new episodes in 1997. Though I wasn’t exposed to any new books, I still had enough exposure to many books to cover the loss of the show. Looking at it nearly 20 years later, I wish a show like Wishbone was around for today’s kids. I thought that the Jack Russell Terrier playing the central character in all of the stories was a good touch that lured me in. It think it could be the same for today’s kids.
