So perhaps the messages presented and featured in Maurice Druon's 1957 novel Tistou mit den grünen Daumen (with the French original title being Tistou les pouces vests) might indeed be regarded as a trifle too philosophical and maybe even rather overly heavy-handedly pro nature and anti war, as well as anti industry. However and in my humble opinion, Druon’s featured text for Tistou les pouces vests (and of course also in translations like in Tistou mit den grünen Daumen et al) is so delightfully sweet and little Tistou with his green thumbs (which he uses in the gardens, to cheer and cure a paralysed girl, but most importantly and by specific and necessary design to thwart his industrialist father's war and weapon mongering with and by basic and total lower power), he is so totally and utterly winsome that this does not really matter all that much (or perhaps I should say that this never mattered all that much to me when I read Tistou bit den grünen Daumen over and over in 1975, when I was nine years old, and still does not matter either).
A simple and caressingly beautifully heartening and evocative little tale is Tistou mit den grünen Daumen and little Tistou's philosophies, his behaviours and actions, his constant (and in the end angelic) striving for world peace, they are truly and indeed as important and as relevant now as when I originally read Tistou mit den grünen Daumen in 1975 (and actually, the salient and sad fact that weapons of mass destruction, that industrialists becoming filthy and gladly rich on weapons, on the marketing of war, majorly profiting from destruction and mayhem, that these infuriating and tragically loathsome truths are still such an important and relevant global issue and topic of and for discussion and consideration, this is all very much and painfully, sadly infuriating, the sweetness and loveliness of Tistou as a character, the implied optimism of his actions, of his flowery protests against war quite notwithstanding). Highly recommended with a solid five star rating (and if you are able to read French, do consider reading Tistou les pouces vests, although yes, I absolutely do love the German translation of my childhood, I adore Tistou mit den grünen Daumen to absolute pieces and will always consider Tistou mit den grünen Daumen an and absolute and total personal reading favourite).