Whatever happened to French children’s books? Malika Browne, whose family is bilingual, looks into a puzzling decline—but finds some hope

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, May/June 2013

FRANCE MAY EXPORT gastronomy, fashion and art de vivre to the rest of the world, but it lags behind the English-speaking world in at least one area: children’s book publishing. A browse through the children’s section of a French bookshop will uncover beautifully illustrated, expensively produced books—including a baffling number about wolves—but to an English reader, their content rarely lives up to the creativity of the presentation, nor are they much fun to read aloud.

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At their worst, French children’s stories are moralistic and heavy-handed, and even at their best, they are often old-fashioned. Many employ the passé simple, a tense too formal for speech, and the type is frequently very small. Engaging narrative tends to be sacrificed to the visual aspect, as though books were purely vehicles for illustrators. In short, French children’s books seem aimed more at adults than children.