l’Êcole des loisirs
Foreign Rights Catalogue Novels Fall 2012
ABOUT US
ntirely dedicated to
E
children’s books since
1965, l’école des loisirs’ main ambitions are to make reading a pleasure for children and to create a home for the authors. We like to consider the authors’ entire works rather than simply their latest title, that is why this catalogue tries to present the books to come but also those we have already published.You will probably notice that our authors write for all ages, and some also for adults.
Mouche - First readers 3 Isabelle Bonameau 4-5 Delphine Bournay 6 Claude Boujon 7 Kéthévane Davrichewy 8 Agnès Desarthe 9 Susie Morgenstern 10 Christian Oster 11 Olivier Rolin 12 Olivier de Solminihac Neuf - 9 to 12 years old readers 13 Gisèle Bienne 14 Audren 15 Jean-François Chabas 16 Claire Fercak 17 Aurélien Loncke 18 Claire Renaud 19 Brigitte Smadja 20 Hervé Walbecq Medium -Young adults 21 Gilles Barraqué 22 Gil Ben Aych 23 Sophie Chérer 24 Maryline Desbiolles 25 Frédéric Faragorn 26-27 Christian Lehmann 28 Colas Gutman 29 Alice de Poncheville 30-31 Murail adapts Dickens 32 Anaïs Sautier Theater Plays 33 Geneviève Brisac & Alice Butaud 34 Claude Ponti 35 Isabelle Rossignol
2
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
AGE
7+
Isabelle Bonameau
Full-color illustrations by the author 56 pages
Maud and Pierre The postman brought Pierre an enormous package this morning. Pierre called his friend Maud right away so that she’ll come open it with him. Inside there is a cage, and in the cage, a bird named Robert. There is also a letter from Pierre’s grandfather. It says that he went on a trip and he is entrusting Pierre with his bird. Neither Maud nor Pierre has ever taken care of a bird. The first thing they do is... open the door of the cage!
talents range from drawing to music, and of course, writing. After numerous picture books, including the classic Au lit les affreux!, and several novels for first readers, here are two new heros, Maud and Pierre, and their three first adventures, each born from an authentic childhood memory.
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
3
AGE
6+
Nibbly and Key Lime Series
SOLD German, Korean
Delphine Bournay was born in 1974. She grew up with her two sisters, early imagining stories to make themselves laugh. Today, she tells stories for children because she still needs to laugh. Focused on her two main characters, she lets them shape their own adventures at the whim of their daily disputes and reconciliations.
4
l’Êcole des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
AGE
6+ NIBBLY AND KEY LIME SERIES (5 titles)
Full-color illustrations by the author 210 pages
The Big Book of Nibbly and Key Lime First published in 5 separate volumes, Nibbly and Key Lime, two inseparable friends, are the heroes of 10 stories reunited in this anthology. Complicity, reciprocal care, support, acceptance over differences... are the main characteristics that build the ties that links the heroes of these series. An ode to an unbreakable friendship. The first volume Grignotin et Mentalo has been awarded by the prestigious “Sorcières Prize” given in 2007 by the French children’s books Librarians Association.
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
5
AGE
6+
Claude Boujon was born in 1930 in Paris. He was chief editor for a publishing house specialized in children’s periodicals up until 1972. After that, he devoted his career entirely to the arts: painting and sculpture, as well as posters, scenography and marionettes. The books for children he has written and illustrated are a natural progression of his work as an artist and his professional experience in the field of young readers. An exceptional fabulist, he has left us a body of work brimming with warmth and humanity. Claude Boujon died in 1995.
SOLD German, Bilingual Chinese/English, Italian, Chinese (simplified), Basque, Korean
6
l’école des loisirs
Full-color illustrations by the author 40 pages
Snails Have No Stories Once upon a time there was a snail who liked telling stories, althought he had never lived one. He knew a lot: for example, the one about the rabbit who couldn’t warm up his ears. Or the one about the king who couldn’t dry his socks in the garden. The one about the witch who was smaller than a fly and the one about the mouse with no whiskers. And many others. An amazing thing happened to this snail: he became the hero of a story himself!
SOLD Catalan, Italian, Chinese (simplified), German, World Spanish, Korean, German
FA L L 2 0 1 2
AGE
7+
Kéthévane Davrichewy
Full-color illustrations by Kimiko 48 pages
The Fairies, the Bears, and Me Papa is leaving on a trip to Africa. Lola will soon help him pack his bags, but at the moment she has a serious mystery to solve: the teddy bears have disappeared. Their names are Kika, Snow, and Bibou. They have lived for a long time on the shelf, and were bored there until Lola saved them, with the help of the fairies. These bears are a bit old and fragile and they couldn’t leave the apartment by themselves. Lola wonders if the fairies have taken the bears out to play without her. “Fairies don’t exist,” her brother Tom tells her. Of course fairies exist. April, the neighbor, has seen them with her own eyes.
was born and lives in Paris, but her roots are Georgian. She is a journalist and novelist and collaborates on scripts for documentary films. She has published numerous books for children with l’école des loisirs. She has also published novels for adults with éditions Arléa and Sabine Wespieser Éditeur, as Mer noire in 2010, already translated in several languages.
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
7
AGE
7+
Agnès Desarthe was born in 1966. Being translation her first job, it was followed by children's books, novels, songs, plays... She leads these various and too many activities simultaneusly, sometimes driving her crazy. Today, she is the author of many books for children and teens, as well as novels for adults. She is also the translator of Lois Lowry and Anne Fine in France.
l’école des loisirs
Dingo and the Meaning of Life Four baby birds are waiting in their nest for their mom to return. Their names are Whoah-Oh, Solo, Heave-Ho, and Dingo. They don’t yet know how to fly. The only thing they know is that they mustn’t lean out of the nest. Their mom told them, “It’s very dangerous.You could fall, and the cat would eat you.” But today a storm is rising. The wind is blowing and the thunder rumbling. It’s very interesting, and Dingo, the most curious of the four, wants to know what’s happening.
SOLD German
SOLD Korean
8
Two-color illustrations by Anaïs Vaugelade 40 pages
FA L L 2 0 1 2
AGE
7+
Susie Morgenstern Full-color illustrations by Alice Charbin 48 pages
Calisson At first it was just an empty box shaped like a lozenge. Calie thought it was so pretty that she made it her box of treasures. She put an autumn leaf in it, and a charm from the King’s Cake... And then she came up with the idea of hiding a list there. The secret list of her worst fears. Nobody knows it, but Calie trembles at the idea of the elastic band on her old underwear coming loose and falling to her ankles during recess. A few days later, in the middle of an oral report, the worst happens!
SOLD German, Korean, SOLD Korean Chinese (simplified)
didn’t have a box of treasures when she was a child. She I had a drawer of treasures, and her treasures were all made of paper; there were notebooks and stationary. Today Susie’s treasures are her books... She has shared more than sixty titles with her young readers and sold them in over 17 different languages.
SOLD German, Korean, World Spanish (excluding Spain)
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
9
AGE
7+
Christian Oster has practiced many professions, library guard, bookseller, copyeditor and has published a dozen of novels for adults at Editions de Minuit. At l’école des loisirs, Christian Oster has already told us the difficulties of a princess with a cold, the adventures of a remote control princess, and about another transformed into a steak... As an original twist, this new novel features a princess that holds the bad role. But she is not as worthless as she seems.
Illustrations by Delphine Perret 64 pages
Princess No Talent She’s a princess who’s worthless at everything. At the ball, she tends to crush the toes of her courters. On a horse, she always ends up falling off the saddle. When she speaks, she says one word instead of another, and at her age, she still doesn’t know how to use a washing machine! Who would want to marry a princess so worthless? Infuriated, the queen kicks her out and tells her to find a husband, no matter what it takes. Luckily, being worthless at everything doesn’t stop a person from making friends. Like this bear who appeared out of nowhere, and who doesn’t seem to find the pretty princess so worthless. SOLD German, Korean
10
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
AGE
7+
Olivier Rolin
Full-color illustrations by Adrien Albert 40 pages
The King of the Moles Where is the king of the moles? Perhaps he’s dozing in a hammock of mist in the middle of the clouds. Perhaps he’s arranging things on his soft planet, where mice one meter long stroll about. But, you’ll say to me, if he is king of the moles, doesn’t he live underground? Yes, of course, the world underground is his kingdom. If you follow him there, perhaps he will show you his gigantic personal museum, or he will teach you how to mix up the roots of plants to surprise the gardeners. In any case, it is he who decides, since he’s the king.
is the author of Port Soudan and Tigre en papier, which respectively received the Prix Femina and the Prix France Culture literary awards. Le roi des taupes, his first book for children, has long awaited its time, in the bottom of the virtual drawer on his computer, which is normal for a lunar book, and for a hero who does as he pleases. But like his elders, his nature is undeniably that of a traveler.
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
11
AGE
7+
Olivier de Solminihac has published over twenty books, including ten novels with l’école des loisirs. He is also a member of Escales des Lettres, which organizes the literary residencies in the North of France. He writes, gives writing workshops here and there, takes trains, rides bike, walks, and even sleeps, sometimes.
Illustrations by Pascal Lemaître 56 pages
Sleeping with a Girl This is a big evening for mom: she invited over a friend whom she hasn’t seen in twenty years. Stéphane is doing his best to help her. He abandoned his airplane drawing in order to clean his room. When the guests rang, he went to open the door and was introduced to Léa, the daughter of his mom’s friend. He didn’t expect he’d find her so pretty. After a snack and something to drink, he showed Léa his room. They played. And then time went by. Stéphane worried: where were the guests going to sleep? When mom explained to him that tonight Léa would sleep in his room with him, Stéphane screamed, “What?”
SOLD Korean
12
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
AGE
10+
Gisèle Bienne
154 pages
The Planet Math Life is often complicated. In order to be able enter primary school, Mathilde had to learn how to use her right hand even though her left hand was perfectly fine. Now it’s her little brother Thomas’ turn to go to school, and it’s a shock for him. He doesn’t understand why he can’t play all day long. So he clings to his sister like a baby bear to his mother. Luckily, there’s also Samuel, who Mathilde will marry one day, and the teacher, who she would really like to impress. And then there are the words, which she adores. On her planet, there are sentences, poems, and illustrated stories. With arithmetic, on the other hand, things go wrong. No matter how Mathilde tries, numbers are a mystery to her. Why is it so difficult to reign on the planet math?
took inspiration from her own experiences at school to recount those of Mathilde. Like her heroine, she was a lot more at ease with words than math. Later, she has published numerous novels for teenagers and adults after having been a literature and painting teacher. Today Gisèle Bienne lives in the East of France, where she gives writing workshops. After ten novels published, La planète maths is her first title for 10+.
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
13
AGE
10+
Audren was born in Paris and has lived in the United States, England, and Italy. She likes to travel, discover new places, and compare cultures. She has been writing novels, poems, and songs since the age of fifteen. Her drawers are filled with timeless, romanesque stories where the fantastical often invites itself in. The second volume, Le monde d’Alvénir, is to be published in Spring 2013.
SOLD Vietnamese
14
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
276 pages
The Orphans of Abbey Road - Vol I The Abbey Road Orphanage wasn’t always called that. It’s better not to ask questions – about that or any other subject. Sister Ethelred doesn’t like when children ask questions. She says that God will bring all the answers. Her answers are punishment. Tonight, like every night, the boarders have said their prayers and Sister Ethelred has turned off the lights in the dormitory. But Joy can’t sleep. She is thinking about the secret that her friend Margarita discovered beneath the abbey church. Why won’t Prudence talk anymore ever since she visited there alone? What is she so afraid of? What is hiding behind the thin smile of Lady Bartropp, the benefactor of the orphanage? And why is little Ginger constantly singing a song in Latin, without even realizing it? The answers are here perhaps, very near, in another world.
AGE
9+
Jean-François Chabas has held
Illustrations by Philippe Dumas 96 pages
I Killed the Ocean Majestic, the ocean gives all: work to the fishermen, fish to the hungry, and a changing beauty to lovers of nature. But sometimes the ocean takes, too. It stole Kukrit’s loves, his wife and little boy, from him. In one villainous wave, it never brought them back. And Kukrit went crazy. In a daily ritual, he walks to the shore, and shoots an arrow into the waves, screaming, “I killed the ocean!” Pridi, a ten-year-old boy, the funniest and most clever of anyone on the island, is intrigued by what happened to Kukrit long ago. He doesn’t believe that grief is sacred. He is the king of jokes, and he has decided to go cheer up the old crazy man. At his own risk and peril.
many jobs before devoting himself to writing. He published more than 30 novels and won many prizes. He harbors a passion for marine life: “If I had my way,” says Jean-François Chabas, “I think I’d only write books about wilderness, the sea, and the mountains. This book is dedicated to a little boy whom he helped raise twenty years ago. “He loved the ocean more than any other being I have ever met.”
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
15
AGE
9+
Ever since Rideau de verre at éditions Verticales, Claire Fercak has carved out her own political poetic path. In order to not leave Louga “waiting for a better life,” Claire took the path to The Other Side Of The World. This year, she is setting down her bags in another literary space, for a writer’s residency which includes cultural activities.
16
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
Full-color illustrations by Adrien Albert 112 pages
The Adventures of Louga on The Other Side of the World Here, on The Other Side of the World, everything is strange – very strange.Yet Louga, a porcelain doll with black nylon hair, knows oddities well. In her imaginary house on The Other Side of the Lake, the closets contain ghosts – and obese cats, too. But here everything is even stranger. Louga is already traveling with a funny miniature mammoth. Then, in the glowing heart of The Dancing Forest, there is a fantastic house made of wood. Except that behind the door there awaits a doll who looks exactly like Louga, escaped from the terrible Wild Boar Camp. Louga has one thing in mind, a grandiose and dangerous project: Operation “Save the Dolls”!
AGE
9+
After a childhood spent in the Vosges Mountains,
Aurélien Loncke now lives 140 pages
Grimme’s Gang It’s just before Christmas, in a park that’s white as sugar and being attacked by a wind that freezes you in one single gust. Seated close together on a wooden bench, the poor little ones from Grimme’s gang are waiting for their boss, shivering and racked with hunger. The gang can only think about their next meal, and how to get it – they often steal for it. Finally Grimme appears, doubled over from his shopping. From his tattered pockets he takes out a key, a piece of string, and a handkerchief... a meager harvest. But from his thin vest he pulls out a lead soldier about ten centimeters high with a rifle on its shoulder and a bunch of feathers in its kepi. What the gang doesn’t know yet is that the infantryman is going to change their lives.
on the bay of Somme in the north of France – a marvelous place where the colors are always changing. He says that he adores tales and good books. In his opinion, the fantasy in children’s books makes it possible to show how to avoid difficult situations in life by way of weapons such as mischief, tricks, and resourcefulness.
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
17
AGE
9+
Claire Renaud lives in Paris with her two daughters. She studied literature and philosophy before becoming an editor. She has written more than forty books for children at Fleurus, as well as a novel for adults, Déboutonnage, published by éditions Stock.
18
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
72 pages
Victor and Philomène When Philomène came to sit next to Victor in the first row, he quickly hid his hand in his sleeve. His left hand, the messed up one that looks like a claw. The one that makes the other students call him the Crab. Philomène is new and must not know. Not right away, at least.Victor just needs the time to let himself be known for who he is. He senses it – this girl is different from the other students. And when Philomène has that lost look on her face and seems like she wants to go back in her shell, she makes Victor think of... a snail.
AGE
9+
Brigitte Smadja
140 pages
Forget about Me for a While, Dad! Naomi is getting ready for a perfect day, celebrating her best friend Valentine’s tenth birthday on a barge, when her parents announce that they are separating. From now on, there will be a before and there will be an after. Before? Her father was often absent, unavailable, absorbed by his work as a mathematics researcher. Presently? He moved into a modern apartment, he shops for groceries and cooks. He organizes outings to the museum and the pool, he plans all sorts of activities... Naomi would really like it if her model father left her alone a little, if he still loved her but stopped trying to take care of her every second they spend together. How can she tell him that without hurting him?
was born in Tunis in 1955. She teaches French at a school for applied arts in Paris, and directs the theatre collection at l’école des loisirs. When she was little, she dreamed of spending all her time locked up in a library studying. She knew that it was highly unlikely she would reach this goal. Nevertheless, she succeeded. How? She started by believing she could. And then, by meeting people who believed in her.
SOLD Italian, Chinese (simplified), Greek, World Spanish, Catalan
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
19
AGE
9+
Hervé Walbecq introduces himself as an actor-illustrator. He acts for the theater, but also film and television. In this new collection of stories, Hervé Walbecq opens the door to his childhood room for us, to a place where wolves are sad and the sheets murmur. On this magic door, he could have written, “Happy are the dreamers; the world belongs to them.”
20
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
Illustrations by the author 112 pages
Stories of the Wolf Who Lives in My Bedroom All is white around me.You can no longer see my toys, you can no longer see my quilt. My bed is a mountain of snow. The wind came in through the window one spring morning, it moved onto my quilt, and it didn’t want to leave. In the distance a wolf calls me. It’s not a mean wolf, it’s a sad wolf. It can’t bear to be alone any longer. It’s asking to come live with me. Without waiting anymore, I take my backpack and a hat from the armoire and I cross the great pine forest. My life is decidedly full of surprises.
AGE
12 +
Gilles Barraqué
288 pages
In the Belly of the World Paohétama was born a girl. One day, they made her a boy. For all the inhabitants on the island of Our Earth, she became a girl-boy, the one who proudly wears her head shaved; the one who joins in the boys’ games and swims with them in the river. And something even more incredible: she’s the first girl on Our Earth allowed to fish! Paohétama’s transformation into a boy is her grandfather’s idea. The master fisherman found a way to lift the tapu that forbids his granddaughter, like all women, from fishing in the sea. The old man can now transmit his immense knowledge to her. But Paohétama is still unaware that the god Oana, the great shark, has some old scores to settle...
happily zigzags through life. After receiving a degree from the Arts Décoratifs in film and animation, he became a professional jazz musician. After that he wound up on a farm, where he worked six months of the year as an agricultural worker and devoted the other six months of the year to writing. Fifteen years later, he chose to devote himself entirely to literature, and several of his novels have been published by Gallimard Jeunesse. His production is as diversified as his personal journey. “Perhaps it’s the fact that I’ve always followed my wishes, impulses, and heart’s desire?”
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
21
AGE
14+
Born in Algeria and now a philosophy professor, Gil Ben Aych is writing the story of his life. At the end of L’essuie-mains des pieds, we left him as a teenager. We now find him in 1962, the night before a birthday celebration compromised by political maneuvers. In order to describe this special moment, Gil Ben Aych dove into the ambience of 1962, listening again to the radio shows of the era and abundantly researching.
SOLD Bilingual Korean/French
22
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
104 pages
The Birthday on 28 October 1962 This 28 October 1962 is Gil’s birthday. But is he going to be able to celebrate turning fourteen as planned? Everything is ready. But the international political situation is not going well. Tensions are extremely high between the USSR and the United States. The Soviets have set up their missiles in Cuba; the Americans are threatening to dismantle them. There is the possibility of a third world war. Gil and his family are hanging on every word of the news broadcast on the radio.
AGE
14+
When she’s not teaching ancient Greek,
Sophie Chérer 210 pages
The True Color of Vanilla In the tropical night a young boy runs away. Edmond is a strange, passionate boy, exceptionally intelligent. He never went to school, but his botanical knowledge rivals that of the most knowledgable. Edmond is black; he was born a slave. He is an orphan. At his birth, a white man took him under his protection, loved him, almost adopted him. And this man, on this night, has betrayed him. Edmond takes two secrets along with him on his flight. The first is a terrible one that he cannot reveal to anyone. The second is quite the contrary: an extraordinary discovery that he made himself, and that can change the destiny of his island. But who will believe the word of a black child in 1841? This book tells a true story that took place on the island of Réunion.
investigates and writes. This novel is at once the fruit of a meticulous research and an undeniable novelistic intuition. With patience and passion, Sophie Chérer imagined the missing pieces of the story of these exiting characters.
SOLD Korean
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
23
AGE
12+
Maryline Desbiolles lives near Nice, a borderland which she has often made a literary subject, like in Lampedusa. She has been writing since the age of six, when she began to scribble in the margins of her school notebooks, an activity which earned her hours of standing in the corner. First noticed in 1998 for her novel La seiche, she received the prix Femina literary award in 1999 for Anchise. She hasn’t stopped publishing since then. Her latest book, published with Seuil, Dans la route, covers the old salt route, which passes just in front of her house.
24
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
80 pages
Lampedusa There was a time when the family dreamed of spending summer vacations on Lampedusa, the narrow island off Sicily. Once the father passed away, the dream vanished, and the mother and her two daughters left the village to move to a town. The older girl is struck with a violent, silent grief. It is she who narrates this story...
AGE
12+
His life revolves around words, stories, and beautiful landscapes.
Frédéric Faragorn lived in
192 pages
Lunerr For the inhabitants of Kerael, the city of the Aels, there is no elsewhere. Their city is located in a desert of sand, rocks, and salt. The word Elsewhere is forbidden there, considered an insult, blasphemy. The young Lunerr learned it at a cost. For having infringed upon the rule, he is whipped bloody and banned from the society. Because of him, mommig lost her job. Who would dare hire the mother of a paria? Ken Werzh! The oldest and most feared man on the island has summoned them to his fabulous sculpted wood house. He seems interested in Lunerr, sufficiently so to make him his reader and private secretary. The adolescent stays on guard: the old man with dead eyes and a body wrinkled like that of a cadaver seems endowed with a singular force. Ken Werzh seems to be keeping a secret, a secret that Lunerr is afraid to discover...
the south of France, before moving to the seaside in Brittany. Stories? He tells them, interprets them, directs them in plays, dreams about them for a long time, twelve, fifteen years at times, before diving into writing. He is the author of Chantelune, a fantasy trilogy published by Bayard a decade ago.
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
25
AGE
12 + SOLD Greek, Italian, German
Christian Lehmann writes novels as well as essays on politics and health. He is currently working on a play for the theatre and he is adapting No Pasarán into a comic strip. “My goal is to aim high and hit hard.” Mission accomplished with the final instalment in the trilogy No Pasarán. Seven years after the publication of Andreas, the Return, Christian Lehmann renews his attack and seals the destiny of his characters. A general practitioner, www.christianlehmann.fr
26
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
454 pages
No Pasarán, the Game Éric and Thierry had never paid much attention to the old military decoration on the jacket of their friend Andreas. Until the day when an old man, in a video game store in London, pointed at the insignia. He grew livid and started screaming. Then he gave them a video game and demanded they play it.Yet what they saw on their computer screen went far beyond what they could have imagined. Ultimate Experience is not just a video game, but rather a passport to hell that sends them into the past, onto the WWI, to Guernica beneath the bombs in 1937 or to Paris during the raids of July 1942... Éric and Thierry are going to burn here. Andreas, blinded by his obsessions, is going to get lost here – unless his two friends attempt the impossible to bring him back. This book brings together the first two volumes of the trilogy No Pasarán: No Pasarán, the Game and Andreas, the Return.
AGE
14+
504 pages
No Pasarán, Endgame What if Ultimate Experience was not only a video game, but a way to turn back the clock? Éric returned to what he still believed was a game to free Andreas. When he found him in Paris in 1942, his former classmate escaped and fled with the disc. Loose, in France during the Occupation. Ready to do anything to upset the course of history and vanquish the executioners’ camp! Who can stop him? Éric and Thierry are now out of the game. Gilles, Éric’s brother, who is a war correspondent, volunteers to return. He can make no mistakes, not in the game nor in real life, because there is no safeguard. There never was one. No Pasarán, Endgame continues the tale after No Pasarán, the Game and Andreas, the Return. It’s the final instalment in the trilogy.
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
27
AGE
14+
Colas Gutman, son of the famous publisher and writer Claude Gutman, thought for a long time that this was the worst career in the world. Then one day, the joy of writting grabbed him and it has never let him go. He is now the author of more than a dozen books for children. His natural penchant for making people laugh permeates his latest book, Les vingt-cinq vies de Sandra Bullot.
SOLD Turkish, Korean, World Spanish, Catalan
28
l’école des loisirs
168 pages
The Twenty-Five Lives of Sandra Bullot “Who are you, Ham And Endives? Have you chosen this pseudonym because you’re daft, or because you are a psychopath? Ever since I began receiving messages from you, I see endives everywhere, and I have had a falling out with Irène Lara, my only friend. As if I didn’t have enough problems. With my mother the actress, incapable of pronouncing the single line they gave her in a moronic film for television. With my father, depressed and eating chips all day long and creeping around the Internet with a certain Natacha833. With Désirée Rathanavana, who is ruining my existence without even knowing it. So, Endive, I’ll be in front of the gate at school tomorrow at 10:00, with a barrette in my hair. Come with an endive, or an umbrella, or a rose. SOLD Turkish, Come if you are a man. Signed, Sandra.” Italian
FA L L 2 0 1 2
AGE
11+
168 pages
My America It isn’t necessary to go to America to discover America. Nor to be an Indian to find feathers in your hair. For Lisa, they appear one calm summer night. The next day, she hides them under a cotton stocking cap. When she meets Lalou, the generous boy who is also keeping a secret she wants to show them to him and him alone. But first she must explore the mountains, understand the presence of the multicolor birds into the forest, and visit the magical triangle where they nest. In the shadows of the undergrowth, Lisa is going to discover all the facets of friendship and the ties that bind generations. The power of love is lurking nearby, too. All it takes is a first kiss for it to be revealed. Her America can be found under the trees.
After having worked in film, Alice de
Poncheville now writes novels. She also runs workshops for children, notably on the art of telling tales.
l’Êcole des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
29
AGE
12+
Marie-Aude Murail adapts Charles Dickens
Full-color illustrations by Philippe Dumas 528 pages
30
l’Êcole des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
AGE
12 +
enlighted by Philippe Dumas’s delicate water-colors “Great Expectations is a love story, a thriller, a social comedy, and a novel for the general public. In it are all the ingredients we associate with Dickens: a young, tormented orphan; a mysterious fortune or a devious man of the law; but also, more unusual, a narrator, Philip Pirrip, called Pip, the antihero with a caustic sense of humor who struggles to grow up over the course of this English sentimental education. My job as the adaptor was similar to what I’ve done when I’ve read Dickens out loud to my children, and to what Dickens himself practiced on his own work when he had to read in public. I removed the length and verbosity from the tale and I gave the characters and sentences more clarity so that things jump out at you, whether this Pip’s terrifying encounter in the middle of the tombs or the ghostly apparition of Miss Havisham, the betrayed fiancée who never changed out of her wedding gown. I wanted Great Expectations to be illustrated like all the Dickens novels were when originally published. The watercolors of Philippe Dumas are like windows that open onto this world of contrasts that bewitched my imagination when I was sixteen.” Marie-Aude Murail
Marie-Aude Murail said to Le Soir, Belgian newspaper: “The young people I meet sometimes press me to say why I love Dickens, and I respond by borrowing from Montaigne his famous, ‘Because it was he, because it was I.’ Not only did I discover through reading Dickens why I was reading, but also why I would write. To make us laugh, to make us cry. To give us characters to love, like Dickens does, and to cause the reader to consider the best side of human nature.”
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l’école des loisirs
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31
AGE
12+
At age fifteen, Anaïs Sautier devoured the novels of l’école des loisirs. In 2010, when she was twenty-five, she signed up for a writing workshop. Anaïs then realized that she felt able to write a text without being ashamed of it the next day. Des yeux bleu trottoir is her first novel. The plot was inspired by a story from one of her friends. Her own childhood memories nourished the fraternity that unites Louis and Otto in the novel.
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l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
182 pages
Sidewalk Blue Eyes Things are spinning out of control in the Record family. The lively surprise parties and songs are over. A weighty silence has settled in ever since Louis’ extravagant mother Doris abandoned her guitar, which gave rhythm to the life of the family. She wanders through the house with a blank expression. Louis’ younger brother Otto, a real motormouth, now spends hours and hours in his room, locked away in grim silence, not even playing with his Legos. That’s when he isn’t beating up his school friends. The father, Marc, is there without being there. Every night he sits in front of the television and doesn’t watch it, fiddling with his iPhone, feverishly waiting for a message. Fifteen-year-old Louis can no longer bear parents who act like this. Otto’s sadness pains him, but the truth to come, totally cruel, will hurt him more.
AGE
7+
An actress for film and the theatre,
Geneviève Brisac has just
Number of characters: 5 48 pages
published Moi, j’attends de voir passer un pingouin with Alma Éditeur. La mère Noël is the second play the two women have written together.
Mrs Santa Claus Christmas is coming.Violette has questions to ask about the Three Kings, about their strange gifts, and about Santa Claus. She asks her teacher, but Madame Krapish becomes annoyed. She asks her marionettes, but they remain silent. She asks her mother, but she doesn’t listen. And what about Mrs Santa Claus? Who is she? What does she do? Why doesn’t anybody talk about her? Where does she live? With Santa Claus? Violette wants answers, and if nobody wants to give them to her, she will find them herself.
T H E AT R E P L AY S
Alice Butaud performed for a year in Geneviève Brisac’s play. Alice often lends her voice to the radio, festivals, and audio books. She is also author of radio plays.
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l’école des loisirs
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33
AGE
7+
One day, Claude handed a play to Brigitte Smadja (the editor for the collection). “Why didn’t you make it a picture book?” “Because it’s a play for the theatre!” he responded. And he was right. This time, he puts two children outside, in the middle of the night, in a tent. An ideal situation for him, who loves to play with fear. Moreover, since it’s the theatre, you can read it, perform it, have fun, and draw all the images that come to mind...
T H E AT R E P L AY S
Ponti
34
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
Number of characters: 2 64 pages
The Tent Her and Him have permission to spend a night in the yard, in the tent. But sleeping isn’t easy. First of all, it’s very dark at night, and then there are strange noises. What if a monster were out there? Her and Him are afraid. What can they do to make the fear go away? Transform it into a tremendous laugh-riot!
AGE
Number of characters: 5 48 pages
Not for Sale Returning home, Iris meets a certain Viviana who offers to make her happy, or in other words to make her a rich little girl. Hard to refuse, seeing that Viviana is already giving her a lot of money and promises her more on the condition that she accompany her to her palace. Iris follows, thrilled. She does not yet know that she is going to pay dearly for it.
When she started writing, Isabelle Rossignol made her debut with a play for adults, Entre les tours (ĂŠditions Joca Seria), and some of her texts were adapted for the stage. If novels were later dominant in her career, she wrote several pieces of fiction for radio, a way for her to renew ties with the theatre. Today, she hopes to alternate between writing novels and writing plays.
l’Êcole des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 2
T H E AT R E P L AY S
8+
35
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