New Children’s Books for Your Weekend!

Because children need to escape to an imaginary world full of dreams and possibilities, we have put together this short list of fiction books for all ages! If you treat them to enough great stories, they might even become writers someday…

Illustration by Marc Boutavant

Reading List

Chien Pourri aux Jeux Olympiques by Colas Gutman, illustrations by Marc Boutavant

For kids ages 6 and up

For Josette and her terrible little brother Jojo, life isn’t easy. Their mother left and their father is putting pressure on them to become great athletes. To help them, Chien Pourri and his friend Chaplapla organize the Jojolympics between some trash cans and a vacant lot. To win medals in the very special events like the Lame Duck, the One-Eyed Rat, the Plucked Sparrow, the Bob-cut Puppy, and the Basset Hound In a Coat, they will really need to up their game–at least as high as the gutter!    

Chien Pourri aux Jeux Olympiques by Colas Gutman, illustrated by Marc Boutavant, Mouche – Ecole des loisirs.

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Tor et le Cow-Boy by Thomas Lavachery

For kids ages 6 and up

A cowboy, in Borgisvik! A real cowboy, like in a Western! Although my father and my uncle are renowned fighters, they quickly discover that this is one is the real deal: he knocks them both out stone cold. And so when he comes to the house later, the atmosphere is a little tense. And then when he announces that he has come to hunt trolls and that he is counting on us to help him, everything officially starts going wrong. Because for us, we already know that trolls exist but we guard their secret to protect them. How can we stop this fearsome hunter?

Tor et le Cow-Boy by Thomas Lavachery, Mouche – Ecole des loisirs.

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For kids ages 9 and up

All of the talent of Jean-Claude Mourlevat in a collection of stories that mixes malice and wisdom.

In a harbor town of Norway, there was a very old man who was missing an ear. “How did you lose it?”, we asked him in the inn where he came to get drunk each evening; and he happily responded: “Oh, that was a long way back!”, he said, “I was still a little boy”.

And each evening, the old sailor told a new story. Can we believe him?

L’Homme à l’oreille coupée et autres histoires by Jean-Claude Mourlevat, Gallimard Jeunesse – Folio Junior.

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2000 ans pour s'aimer by Marie-Aude Murail

For kids ages 11 and up

A mysterious vial filled with blood-colored perfume travels across time, passing through the hands of Alba (a beautiful Gallic slave), those of Wulfila (a young Barbar), then those of Loup (the page), Margot (the little witch), and lastly Camille (an 1848 rioter)–and then leading up to our present day.
Yet when one opens the vial, it emits sometimes a horrible odor and sometimes a celestial scent, depending on the century.
A legend recounts that two drops can cure leprosy or cholera, can heal mortal wounds; and still more, can make people fall in love who are least expecting to.

2000 ans pour s’aimer by Marie-Aude Murail, Bayard Jeunesse – Je Bouquine.

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Fo kids ages 10 to 12

Cottingley (UK), Summer 1917. Elsie, 16 years old, is taking care of her cousin Frances, 9 years old, who has come to live with her and her mother while waiting for the war to end. One day, after having been yelled at after a walk, the cousins invent an excuse: they saw fairies near a stream!
To prove it, Elsie–a photography enthusiast–takes a photo of Frances posing in front of fairies made out of cardboard. It is so well done that their amazed mothers believe them. They decide to take another photo…

L’affaire des fées de Cottingley, by Natacha Henry, Rageot.

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