Dikkie Dik

The books are drawn by author Jet Boeke, and feature short, concise texts by Arthur van Norden.

The series started in 1978 as part of the Dutch version of the children's TV show Sesame Street, but soon the stories appeared in bookstores.

On Sesame Street the stories were read aloud by Piet Hendriks, with recurring characters like Tommie, Pino or Troel listening.

In the early 1980s the stories in Sesame Street were told by Rudy Kuhn, with some children as an audience, and in 1985 Frank Groothof took over.

The theatershow Sex of the Dutch theater group De Vliegende Panters contains a persiflage on Dikkie Dik (in fact it's a parody of the narrator of Surinamese origin Rudy Kuhn, who read in the program Sesame Street from Dikkie Dik in the eighties), in which he stole a car radio and put a shot.

Dikkie Dik book cover