way2go! 6, Schulbuch

46 LITERATURE Literature along the way The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid  by Bill Bryson In The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid Bill Bryson describes the events and feelings he had growing up in Des Moines, Iowa, in the early 1950s. Locate Iowa on a map of the USA. What might everyday life have been like in Des Moines in the 1950s? As a young boy Bryson imagined being a superhero (‘Thunderbolt Kid’) with the ability to vaporise people who annoyed him. Why do you think he invented this persona for himself? In extract 1, Bryson describes his childhood shopping experiences in Des Moines. Before reading the text, discuss the following questions: 1 What do you remember about the shops in your area when you were still in primary school? 2 Did you enjoy shopping as a kid? 3 How have shops changed in recent years? Now read the extract. 1 a b 2 a b Dahl’s, our neighborhood supermarket, had a feature of inspired brilliance called the Kiddie Corral 1 . This was a snug enclosure, built in the style of a cowboy corral and filled with comic books, where moms could park their kids while they shopped. Comics were produced in massive numbers in America in the 1950s – one billion of them in 1953 alone – and most of them ended up in the Kiddie Corral. It was filled with comic books. To enter the Kiddie Corral you climbed onto the top rail and dove in, then swam to the center. You didn’t care how long your mom took shopping because you had an infinite 2 supply of comics to occupy you. I believe there were kids who lived in the Kiddie Corral. Sometimes when searching for the latest issue of Rubber Man, you would find a child buried under a foot or so of comics fast asleep or perhaps just enjoying their lovely papery smell. No institution has ever done a more thoughtful thing for children. Whoever dreamed up 3 the Kiddie Corral is unquestionably in heaven now; he should have been awarded a Nobel Prize. In our memory, things are often better than they were in reality. Read through this section again and underline all the instances where Bryson paints a rosy picture. Do these descriptions make the text more appealing to you or are they exaggerated?  1  corral: eingezäuntes Areal  2  infinite: unendlich  3  to dream up sth.: sich etw. einfallen lassen 1 Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv