the war approached without stopping

> A photo novel

It is a rare work offered here by director Pierre-Jacques Ober and his wife, Australian photographer Jules Ober. After a first joint work, Little soldier (2018), on the Great War, this time they devote themselves to the story of Jacqueline, the author’s mother, aged 7 in 1939. The method is the same: an extraordinary photographic work of reconstruction with soldiers lead, and a lively, precise, luminous story in the form of a photo novel. Little Jacqueline follows her mother who crosses France to join her husband, a soldier, taken prisoner in the occupied zone. She helps him to escape, and they will then leave for Algiers, then for Germany at the end of the war.

“Jacqueline”, by Pierre-Jacques Ober and Jules Ober. Youth threshold, 104 pages, 16 euros. From 7 years old.

> A comic

Cary Fagan is Canadian. It tells the story of the childhood of Maurice Fajgenbaum, his father, a Jew, during the Second World War. The young Maurice, whose parents are from Poland, grew up in Brussels, and only knew this city when the Nazis invaded Belgium in 1940. He and his parents, brother, sister and were forced into it. exile. Begins what we know : uprooting, incessant travel, fear of being discovered, from Paris to a small French village, then to Pau and Lisbon. “It’s not easy to go sightseeing when you are trying to save your skin”, notes Maurice’s mother. And what we know less: the departure by boat for a refugee camp in Jamaica (then a British colony) bearing the name of “Gibraltar camp”, because it hosted, among others, residents of the rock. What is striking, along this story of uncertainties, is the constancy of Maurice’s will. He dreams of becoming a lawyer; he gives himself the means to study, in all circumstances. The Mauritius War, it is also the pursuit of a hope.

“La Guerre de Maurice”, by Cary Fagan and Enzo Lord Mariano, translated from English (Canadian) by Ilona Meyer and Caroline Drouault. Les éditions des éléphants, 56 pages, 16 euros. From 8 years old.

> A small album

“Arthur and Malika”, by Paul Brière and Claude K. Dubois.

On the one hand, a little boy, Arthur, who watches the war on TV, “With real blood”. On the other, a little girl, Malika, forced into exile “Far away, in a new country. She will never see her friends again ”. Each double page offers a glimpse into the daily life of the two children, at their height: the death of Arthur’s dog, Patou, hit by a car, is more tragic than Malika’s stay at the dispensary because she broke a arms – she eats dates there with a friend with burnt hands. The two stories will eventually come together. The drawings, like sketches that sometimes do without text, envelop this story with a certain softness.

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