“I shrunk my parents”
What if, for once, we reversed the roles. And if, on the day of the start of the school year, it wasn’t for the children to worry about discovering a new environment – a new class, a new teacher, new classmates – but parents… Pascaline , the little bat, howls so loudly in the face of its parents that morning that they, a bit like in Claude Ponti’s books, suddenly shrink. No taller than two peanuts, here they are slipped under the wing of their daughter, giant for the blow, direction school, despite their strong protests. Dreamed or not, this impromptu scenario will amuse the young heroine for a while before she realizes that parents are not totally useless on such a day, especially when it comes to picking up their offspring at the end of the class. . Beatrice Alemagna’s skipping tone and alert drawing poetically play down what should only be a non-event in the lives of toddlers.
” Not even in dreams “, by Beatrice Alemagna (L’Ecole des loisirs, 44 pages, € 12.70). From 3 years old.
Leonor’s secret
No insider trading in this book, no little mouse in the classroom. Those who hope to unravel the mystery of what happens behind the gates of the big school, when their child enters CP, will be at their expense: here, we are told the “before” and “after” , not the “during”. But what we discover in this little album with soft drawings is far more precious: what goes on in the mind of a little girl, Leonor, on her first day. When she wakes up, she hides her tutu under her clothes, like pocketing a talisman. Just after, appears the other great character (not by the size) of this book, Max, Leonor’s little brother. The bond that unites them is incredibly beautiful. She goes to look for him in his crib, hides the breakfast banana to make him laugh, tells him about her life. In the evening, she undertakes to teach the alphabet to this little being in a onesie, who falls from the chair but does not protest, because he “Wait until Mom is there to cry”. The last thought of the little girl before going to sleep will be for him. It is so rare that children’s books take the time to digress that they are not entirely devoted to the effectiveness of the subject. This is the immense strength of this rare album.
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