We were invited to our first kindergarten-friend birthday party recently, and in lieu of gifts for the birthday child, families were invited to bring a new, wrapped picture book for a collective book exchange! Seeing as most of the children at the party would be fellow French immersion students, we decided to purchase a French picture book as our contribution to the exchange. While I would have preferred to shop locally, finding French titles in my neighbourhood proved difficult, and I ended up ordering French versions of two beloved Eric Carle books online, guessing that most children (and parents) would be familiar with the original texts.
This, of course, is the French version of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, which uses a jaunty repetitive text to introduce children to animal and colour vocabulary. It’s a fantastic book for language learners, whatever language they might be learning!
Since the book was a smaller paperback, I decided to order a second title, just to make the gift feel a bit more substantial for the eventual recipient. In keeping with the Carle theme, I grabbed the French version of his most famous work, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Who can resist that adorable little face?
Prior to wrapping the books for the party, I took a moment to read them with my son, who I realized had never actually read the books in English! He was fascinated with Carle’s illustrations, and was deeply disappointed to discover that the books were not actually for him, though I did assure him we could borrow the English versions from our local library.
I wrapped the books, brought them to the party, and promptly forgot about them. After snacks and cake it was time for attendees to pick a book to take home as their “goodie bag”. My son waited patiently for his turn, and when it finally came, he immediately grabbed the books we’d brought for the exchange! The birthday child’s mother kindly reminded him that he’d brought those books from home, to which he replied simply “I know”. It turns out he was so enamoured with the books I’d purchased that he’d been hoping all afternoon that he’d get to keep them! Oh well, we don’t currently own any French picture books, so it all turned out alright in the end.
Anyway, that’s my long-winded way of saying that this week we’ve been reading a lot of Eric Carle in French.
Have a lovely week, friends, whatever books you might be reading!
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C’est magnifique, Jane! I studied French long ago, though I’ve lost most of it, can still read it fairly well! I love that about your son, C’est très drôle. And, I love that those two books are new to him & he loved them immediately! Happy Reading!