New Children’s Books: Changes in the Family

What happens to children when parents divorce? When a new baby arrives? Nicolas Mathieu and Pauline Delabroy Allard explore with subtlety, imagination, and much humor these moments of and transition when life goes on, but not exactly like before, moments which mark however softly a before and an after.

Reading List

La grande école by Nicolas Mathieu et Pierre=Henri Gomont

For kids ages 5/6 and up!

A father walks his boy to his first day of school (first grade), along the way, they remember days of their past summers, grandma’s garden and its strawberries, driving to the beach, their life with Mom, Mathieu’s dialogues and Pierre-Henri Comont’s drawings capture what we guess is a new stage of life for father and son: with its succession of small challenges, frustrations, moments of dullness and shared complicity.

La grande école, a picture book by Nicolas Mathieu and Pierre-Henri Gomont, Actes Sud Junior

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Le Dégât des Eaux , Theirry Mgnier by Pauline Delabroy-Allard and Camille Jourdy

In the pitch black night of his room, Nino and his stuffed whale get up to see Papa wiping the water-soaked floor of the kitchen, with Mama standing beside.

Papa puts him back to bed, but Nino gets up a little later — this time he gazes into the washing machine window for so long, that he finds himself swimming in the deep blue waters of an ocean. Thus the start of a fabulous journey.

Pauline Delabroy Allard and Camille Jourdy transform the arrival of a new family member into an underwater adventure with extraordinary images!

Le Dégât des eaux, a picture book by Pauline Delabroy-Allard and Camille Jourdy, THierry Magnier

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After almost two decades of working in publishing, and a few round trips between Paris and New York, Miriam has decided to settle down at Albertine to do what she enjoys most: recommending books she loves. Somehow this also includes taking bizarre pictures for Albertine's social media outlets.
Other recommendations by Miriam Bridenne
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