l’Êcole des loisirs
Foreign Rights Catalogue Novels Fall 2013
Mouche - First readers 3 Christine Avel 4 Isabelle Bonameau 5 Nathalie Brisac 6-7 Colas Gutman 8 Agnès Debacker 9 Susie Morgenstern 10-11 Christian Oster 12 Coline Pierré
ABOUT US
ntirely dedicated to
E
Neuf - 9 to 12 years old readers 13 Jean-François Chabas 14-15 Audren 16-17 Aurélien Loncke 18 Olivier de Solminihac 19 Hélèna Villovitch 20 Hervé Walbecq
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’
Medium -Young adults 21 Luc Blanvillain 22-23 Anne Bouin 24 Shaïne Cassim 25 Chris Donner 26 Malika Ferdjoukh 27 Maëlle Fierpied 28 Nathalie Kuperman 29 Claire Maugendre 30 Marie-Aude Murail 31 Tania Sollogoub
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,
©
Ra sca l
including some for adults.
2
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
AGE
© E. Fagnou
7+
Christine Avel
Full-color illustrations by Bruno Heitz 72 pages
Brigitte Frightens the Fries Brigitte is the lunchroom supervisor. She looks like an ogress. She forces the children to eat all the fat on their ham, and to finish eating the meat on their plate, even if it’s squishy and smells like burnt rubber. When Simon tells her that he is allergic to cheese, she refuses to believe him. Brigitte doesn’t play. Brigitte is scary. Luckily, Simon’s new friend Thomas has a solution. “It’s simple,” he says. “We’ll go on strike. A lunchroom strike.”
ate so many fries when she was a child that she is forever more disgusted by them, just as she is by Nutella, which she binged on when she was 12. Luckily, her children often remind her how much fries can brighten up a day, especially in the lunchroom.
SOLD Korean
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
3
AGE
7+
© P. Catroux
MAUD AND PIERRE SERIES (2 TITLES)
Playing with brushes, pens, or scissors...
Isabelle Bonameau knows how to do it all, or almost. She is the one who cuts everyone’s hair in her family: brothers, husband, even the neighbors. And she doesn’t just give bowl cuts. So we shouldn’t be surprised to find this story about a hair salon in the three new adventures of Maud and Pierre, two little pigs who make a great pair... of scissors!
4
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
Full-color illustrations by the author 64 pages
Maud and Pierre’s Hair Salon Maud and Pierre have come up with an idea to become rich and earn lots of chewing gum. They are going to open a beautiful hair salon and call it “Maud and Pierre’s Hair Salon”. They will offer their customers only one cut, a bowl cut, and they’ll ask to be paid in chewing gum. But in order to attract customers, they must make the bowl cut fashionable. And then they must hurry up, before it goes out of fashion...
AGE
© C. Crenel
7+
Full-color illustrations by Rascal 56 pages
The Prettiest of Dreams Gaston the Great is quite bothered. Poutyface, the cruelest, most powerful man in the kingdom, has given him the task of tracking down and catching a dream – the most beautiful dream that one could imagine. Gaston the Great is proud that he’s been chosen to accomplish this mission, but he’s afraid he will fail. In order to succeed, he must solve three mysteries, but he doesn’t even know what a dream looks like. He doesn’t worry for too long; the only ones who still know how to dream in this kingdom are the children.
Writing from her memories as a schoolteacher and as a mom, Nathalie Brisac created her hero Minusman, “the little guy who always beats the big people.” For once it isn’t her hero Minusman who occupies Nathalie Brisac’s thoughts! A certain Gaston the Great has taken the place of “the little guy who wants to beat the big people.” The novelist wanted to create new characters and dive into a new universe – and she succeeded, with this modern tale “about the need to see big and escape the everyday.”
SERIES SOLD Korean
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
5
AGE
6+
Filthy Dog Series Series in progress – third title to be published in 2014
© Rights reserved
56 pages
The child of writer parents, Colas Gutman though for a long time that this was the worst career in the world. He is now the author of a dozen books for children and teenagers, which he’s been writing regularly since 2006. In Rose, his little heroine reads the adventures of Filthy Dog. This “ugly, stupid, and stinky” animal is now the hero of a series. Woof!
To be published in 2014 72 pages
Filthy Dog Filthy Dog Goes to School “Filthy Dog is at once a dog and a miserable being who must confront a society that is cruel to the poor. He’s also a hero who saves those who are weakest. In short, I adore this dirtball of an animal, and I never tire of telling his adventures.” Colas Gutman
SOLD World English Korean, Turkish
6
l’école des loisirs
SOLD Italian, Turkish
FA L L 2 0 1 3
AGE
7+ FILTHY DOG SERIES (3 TITLES)
Full-color illustrations by Marc Boutavant 72 pages
Merry Christmas, Filthy Dog! It’s Christmas in Filthy Dog’s garbage can. His friend Flat Cat is set on spending Christmas Eve in a house. But who would want a mite-infested dog and a flattened cat for a holiday celebration? The Noël family, perhaps? When Filthy Dog comes scratching at their door, he arrives at the right moment. Marie-Noëlle is thrilled to have finally found the worst gift to give her brother, Jean-Noël. Beneath the Christmas tree, the war of the filthy gifts begins. A doll without arms for a filthy dog and a flattened cat – it’s the beginning of a marvelous tale of garbage.
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
7
AGE
© Rights reserved
7+
An educator and director of poetry performances for children, Agnès Debacker has always worked with young people. My Dear Alice is the first book she has written for them. She fell in love with Alice in Wonderland and didn’t know how she could leave Lewis Carroll’s characters after she finished the book, so she brought them back to life in order to stay with them – while drinking tea, like Alice.
8
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
Full-color illustrations by Marie Assénat 80 pages
My Dear Alice I was the white rabbit, and I was the one the Queen had designated executioner to chop off Alice’s head. Oh, Alice... She was an ugly annoying little girl, anyway. But Alice suddenly started to grow and grow some more. And then she fled. So, armed with an axe, I had to run after her, and I traveled through the Wonderland in search of her. I met the Mad Hatter, a gigantic snail, and other fantastic animals. What made me run after Alice when I didn’t want to harm her in the least?
AGE
© P. Diana
7+
Susie Morgenstern
Full-color illustrations by Philippe Dumas 72 pages
Princess Achoo Achoo! Princess Philomena is feeling under the weather. She has been stricken with a raging cold on the very day of the grand ball given in her honor. It is tonight that Philomena must choose a groom, a prince charming to wed, for better or for worse. She’s already experiencing the worse part! How can she dance in this state when she has only one wish, and that is to be left alone so that she can... Achoo!... sneeze in peace!
wrote this book following a bad cold, “a historic cold that would shatter the Richter scale!” The virus has contaminated her latest heroine, Princess Philomena. Susie likes to make her princesses experience ordinary situations in order to tell the most extraordinary tales. “Like the little girl I was, I love princess stories, and I know deep down that I’m a princess, too...”
SOLD German Korean World Spanish (Spain excluded)
SOLD German Korean, Chinese simplified
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
9
AGE
© H. Bamberger/Opale
7+
Christian Oster recognizes that he discovered tales late. The audacity and inventiveness of the Brothers Grimm fills him with enthusiasm, and he won’t rest until he has paid homage to the genre by updating it in each story he writes. In The Invitation Made to the Wolf, the traditional wolf-pig couple has fun with words. And their author does, too.
The Invitation Made to the Wolf The pig has had enough. He can’t take it anymore. He loves to leave the farm and go out strolling in the forest, but the wolf spends his time chasing after him. Moreover, it serves no purpose. The wolf never catches him because the pig runs too fast. So, to make this little game stop, the pig strikes a deal with the wolf. The wolf will have to come to the farm and undergo an IQ test. But in order for that to happen, the pig needs the support of all his friends on the farm...
SOLD German
SOLD German
10
Full-color illustrations by Anaïs Vaugelade 48 pages
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
AGE
7+
Full-color illustrations by various artists 154 pages
Knights and Princesses with Leg of Lamb Here come the heroic knights who confront dragons, princesses, and giants who haunt the forest. Heroic, really? Let’s take another look: a knight who wonders where he could have put his socks; a giant who no longer has a taste for devouring leg of lamb and who dreams of being a goblin, a really no-good princess, to the point that she doesn’t know how to dance or ride a horse. Knights and Princesses with Leg of Lamb is a compilation of three tales by Christian Oster: The Knight in Search of His Socks (illustrations by Pascal Lemaître; German rights sold), The Giant and the Fairy (illustrations by Audrey Poussier), and Princess No Talent (illustrations by Delphine Perret).
© P. Lemaître
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
11
AGE
© Rights reserved
7+
Coline Pierré is 26 years old and has been writing for a long time, “without succeeding at finishing anything.” If she brought to its conclusion this story about a little boy who wants to learn to purr in order to soothe his friend, it’s because the author sometimes dreams of being a cat. She named her cat Penny Lane, like the song by the Beatles, and envies her cat’s independence, her peaceful and undoubtedly less anxious life.
12
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
Full-color illustrations by José Parrondo 88 pages
Learning to Purr Why do cats purr? To communicate with humans, to say that they’re happy, or to comfort themselves when they are in pain. That’s exactly what Albin wants: to communicate with his new friend Léane without using words, and to comfort her when she’s despondent. So he has to learn how to purr, and to do that, according to the specialists, what’s most important is to behave exactly like a cat. Sleep curled up in a ball in a basket, lap up milk, eat dry food, clean yourself using your tongue: this is the program decided upon for Albin. And meowing instead of speaking, of course. Even at school.
AGE
© F. Bourru
9+
As the years pass,
Jean-François Chabas becomes
80 pages
Extraordinary Tales Three stories with one thing in common: a child who is alive thanks to his encounter with an extraordinary creature, a unique experience which helps him to grow. At age three, a young boy discovers that he can hear the thoughts of birds and understand their language. He chooses to not talk about this gift, but his talent persists, and what he learns the day he attends a court hearing of crows is terrible. A little girl, fascinated by the thick layer of snow covering her mountainside every winter, wonders who could be hiding behind the white wall. An avalanche leads her underground, to a place populated by out-of-the-ordinary creatures. Last but not least is a young boy who sneaks out of the house one night and thinks he sees a fascinating ghost that he soon calls “Light Bear”.
more and more a passionate observer of wilderness and nature. These three tales were inspired by his childhood memories, filled with unalloyed joy before the snow, the crows, and the night. He endeavors to share this happiness, which helped make him who he is.
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
13
AGE
10+
The Orphans of Abbey Road Series
304 pages
276 pages
The Green Devil – Vol I
The World of Alvenir – Vol II
At the Abbey Road Orphanage it’s better not to ask questions. Sister Ethelred doesn’t like it when children ask questions. God brings answers and Sister Ethelred’s answers are always punishments. In the first volume, Joy and Margarita are trying to save their friend Prudence from the Green Devil’s powers. The clues are very near, in another world.
In this volume, Lady Bartropp and Joy go to the land of Alvenir searching for their missing beloved. Lady Bartropp has come for her kidnapped sister, and Joy hopes to find her parents, whom she believes are still alive. It seems that in the world of Alvenir everyone has a purpose – even Alonn, the strange and handsome boy with violet eyes who does the opposite of everything he promises.
“The unconscious? A dream? Pure fantasy? All three at once, it seems, in this world where the heros are both themselves and someone different. We stroll through this imaginary land, delighted.” La Boîte à sorties
14
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
AGE
10+
© Rights reserved
ABBEY ROAD SERIES (4 TITLES)
304 pages
The Lights from the Past – Vol III The boarders and teachers of the orphanage have all fallen into a deep, lethal drowsiness. Joy and her classmates must return to Alvenir to find Alchiminott, the only antidote that can dissipate this spell. This time, they have to go to Alvenir’s past, to the origins of evil, when the Green Devil, now the master of the orphanage, was nothing but a creature of love and compassion. For the moment, Joy’s only certitude is named Alonn, someone whom she’d like to stop thinking about. Yet when she meets Mauk, with his dark skin and intense gaze, her heart starts to pound. In Alvenir, spells, like dramas, can be born from stories of impossible loves.
Singer and author Audren writes poetry, plays for the theater, songs, and novels. Convinced of the existence of magic in real life, it is only natural that she brings fantasy into her stories. The Orphans of Abbey Road have had plenty of experience with it.
SOLD Korean
Fourth and last volume entitled The Invasion of the Mogadors to be published in 2014.
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
15
AGE
9+
© Rights reserved
The Grimme Gang Series
Urged by readers and encouraged by critics,
Aurélien Loncke readied himself for the game of a sequel with jubilation, and he doesn’t want to stop just yet. “Now that I’ve caught up with the orphans of the Grimme gang again, I don’t want to let them go.” Something tells us that this author from Alsace, near the German border, has set the latest adventures of his Grimme gang in the villages of his childhood.
16
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
140 pages
The Grimme Gang It’s just before Christmas, in a park white as sugar that’s under attack by a freezing wind. Seated close together on a bench, the poor little ones from the Grimme gang wait for their boss. They are shivering and racked with hunger. Finally Grimme appears. From his tattered pockets he takes out a key, a piece of string, and a handkerchief... a meager harvest. But from his vest he pulls out a lead soldier about ten centimeters high. What the gang doesn’t know yet is that the infantryman is going to change their lives.
AGE
9+ THE GRIMME GANG SERIES (2 TITLES)
140 pages
The Grimme Gang and the Magicians of the World Ever since the magician Nicholas Gazame took the eight orphans of the Grimme gang under his wing, their days of tattered clothes and growling stomachs are over. But they’re still raging against the rich and powerful Henry Harrings. They are far from forgetting his unkept promise of a fabulous recompense for the restitution of his golden soldiers, and they keep in mind his guile. In that case, why do we see them pasting up posters on the walls of the city that announce a big worldwide magic competition, presided by the crook Henry Harrings? What is the Grimme gang up to?
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
17
AGE
© Rights reserved
9+
Born in 1976, the famous Olivier de Solminihac is a discreet young man. He writes singular novels in which we each can find our secret thoughts. His characters are as interested in Pluto as they are in Tony Parker, and they explore reality like adventurers. The narrator of Marilyn the Famous, who also narrates L’amour, l’amour and Ma pomme, has no first name, but his voice is like no other.
18
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
72 pages
Marilyn the Famous No one pays attention to Marilyn except me. It’s as if she were invisible. At school, nobody talks to her. Lionel and Augustin’s gang never invite her to play with them. And Mr.Varol systematically forgets to call on her. Sometimes, even her parents don’t remember to come pick her up when school lets out. “You exist for me”, I told Marilyn, but she replied that this wasn’t enough. She thought about it a lot, and found only one way out: “I’m going to become famous”, she told me, taking a pen and an autograph book out of her pocket. When she explained her plan to me, I thought that it wouldn’t work. And yet...
AGE
9+
© Rights reserved
FERDINAND SERIES (3 TITLES)
140 pages
F as in Ferdinand When he wakes up that morning in an unknown bed in a room as blank as his memory, Ferdinand has forgotten everything. Even his first name, even the language he speaks – he only babbles one mysterious word, like an infant: Moukajou. This amnesia might be disturbing if there weren’t a beautiful unknown lady by his bedside. Dressed in white, with a delicate scent, she seems to know him. Traveling between wakefulness and sleep, the young boy is awarded the key to a mystery that will unfold 15,000 kilometers from here. It is the confirmation for Ferdinand that dreams can really and truly change reality, in Moukajou like elsewhere, for himself and for all his somewhat special friends.
Painter, filmmaker, writer, and critic, Hélèna Villovitch wields a rich palette of talents, caressing the limits of reality, dreams, and fiction. By endowing her hero Ferdinand with micropowers, she gives free reign to her adolescent passion, science fiction. The fantastic serenely seeps into daily life, with fantasies inspired by anecdotes, historic facts, and real-life characters who are rather extraordinary.
SERIES SOLD German
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
19
AGE
© O. Allard
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 invites us into his absurd, funny, and poetic world in which houses move, moms dress up in wallpaper, and doormats want to become bedcovers.
20
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
Illustrations by the author 154 pages
Stories of the House that Wanted to Move The windows fly away like multicolored butterflies. The car is parked in the bathroom, the living room has transformed into a pool, and a shoe closet is disguised as a dining room. The doormat would like to become a quilt so that it can finally sleep on a bed. And the house goes to sea to take a cruise, forgetting about the mailbox. If all remained in its place, the world would be terribly boring. As luck would have it, houses have a taste for other places, too.
AGE
© Rights reserved
12 +
140 pages
Cupid Power I have a superpower. If I could have chosen, I would have preferred to be Superman, Batman, or God O’Football, of course. But I didn’t have a choice. My superpower fell upon me one day during recess. I transmitted a message to a girl on behalf of a boy, and boom, it all started. She was in love with him. From that point on, it has worked every time, for everyone, except one person. I don’t have the ability to profit myself from my superpower, to make Celia Walkington, the most beautiful girl in the world, say yes rather than no. It’s unfair, and it’s unbearable.
Luc Blanvillain, 45, a father of three and a French teacher in Brittany, has already published several novels for adolescents. His family didn’t need superpowers to help him write Cupid Power; being themselves was enough. It was his eighteenmonth-old son who gave him the first inspiration, as well as his partner, who after reading this book whispered to him, “Send this to l’école des loisirs!”
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
21
AGE
12+
© Rights reserved
Nenets Series
Like Blaise Cendrars, whom she cites occasionally, Anne Bouin has never boarded the TransSiberian Railway. “When I write, I’m like a child playing ‘What If’,” she says. “I start to believe it.” In this book, she succeeds in transforming the mythic train into a Russian boarding school, its cabins into dorm rooms, its dining car into a classroom. “It was simple to imagine because I would have loved experiencing this kind of adventure at school!”
22
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
Little Nenets Leaf
A Siberian Summer
By what coincidence did a tiny dried leaf end up between the pages of a book? In the bedroom of their Russian boarding school, Sanouk, Penelope and Ludmila savor their discovery. Is it another one of their literature professor’s tricks to intrigue them and make them want to read this strange book? Is this leaf there to alert them to the dangers that threaten the Nenets people, the Siberian nomads this book is about? Sometimes, all it takes is a tiny leaf to sow revolt in a boarding school for young Russian girls...
During summer vacation, Sanouk is off to Siberia to finally meet her father, the Nenets poet, Andrei Voronov. Ludmila has gone to Moscow to see her father, a geologist who supports the Nenets cause. As for Penelope, she’s on the Black Sea coast, staying at her aunt’s sumptuous villa, and bored. Everything changes with the arrival of the boarding school vice-principal. Sanouk’s father is accused of sabotage, thus damaging the Nenets cause. The three girlfriends will unite forces and try to stop terrible events from occurring.
AGE
12+ NENETS SERIES (3 TITLES)
280 pages
Life Is an Arrow The Biriozy boarding school is running adrift, with bad management, teachers resigning, unmotivated students, and general uncertainty. Ever since Olga Petrovna is no longer running the establishment with an iron fist, the students seem disoriented. Someone must act, and quickly. Mordiev, the literature teacher, is convinced that only an experimental trip will lift the students out of their torpor. This won’t be a bit of tourism, but rather living like they do at the boarding school, but while feeling the world move, seeing it transform to the rhythm of the hours and thousands of kilometers. Biriozy on the railroad, that’s what’s at stake! Why not the Trans-Siberian railway?
in Bou nne ©A
Life Is an Arrow ends the trilogy that began with Little Nenets Leaf and A Siberian Summer.
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
23
AGE
© Rights reserved
12+
Born in Madagascar in 1966, Shaïne Cassim is an editor of children’s books; she is also the author of several novels for young adults. She is a lover of all forms of literature, and is especially passionate about poetry. It’s a particularity that she shares with the poetess Flannery O’Connor.
224 pages
A Season with Jean-Esther In a small town in Mississippi near the river, Eden Villette tries to write poetry. It’s the summer of 1967, and the United States is buzzing with debates around the Civil Rights Movement between reformers and partisans for radical action. That summer, Jane-Esther Sanchis arrives in town, crowned with her literary glory. She’ll spend several weeks there and give a conference. She meets up with her childhood friends Kate, Eden’s aunt, and Edna Gardner. Eden is looking for advice from them: how to write, how to love, and how to find her way in life. On the banks of the river, the answers may not belong to those who seem to hold them.
24
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
AGE
© O. Roller
12+
Chris Donner
176 pages
My Beginnings in Art David Belting has a gift. He draws spendidly, without ever having studied it. His parents are convinced that David will be a great artist and make a fortune. This is why they push him to take classes with old Miss Elroy, and then, when he’s 15, to enter the new art school in Reno. But there, teaching is shared between two teachers with diametrically opposing views. How can a young artist find his way in this hostile environment? David will have to make his own way on a path that is perhaps no larger than the famous Donner Pass, where in the 19th century, those seeking gold rushed toward the west.
has finally found a (fake) clarification of his pseudonym. He lets us learn about it in My Beginnings in Art. According to the legend, the Donner party founded Reno. It’s in this American city that he has set his novel. Chris Donner leads us to Reno to meet a family without conflict and enter the world of contemporary art.
SOLD Catalan Italian, Japanese
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
25
AGE
© Rights reserved
12 +
Malika Ferdjoukh was born in 1957 in Algeria, and has lived in Paris since she was a small child. She skipped several films at the Cinémathèque to take classes at the Sorbonne university. Since then she has been writing several novels for young adults.
176 pages
Alfred’s Reel Harry Bonnet, age 16 and son of a Parisian chef, is crazy about cinema. After a fortuitous encounter, his father is hired in Hollywood. America! With stars on every street corner! One night, Harry sneaks onto set number 17, where he replaces a sick supporting actor on short notice, and... winds up face-to-face with Alfred Hitchcock. The most famous director in the world starts shooting what he’s dreamt about for forty years: the adaptation of a play by J. M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan. It’s all top secret. The film has a fake title and Hitchcock himself has taken a code name. But why the devil did Harry want to see the first minutes of the ghost film? Why did he disobey the master of suspense?
26
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
AGE
© J.-M. Laroque
12+
Born in 1977,
Maëlle Fierpied spent her
280 pages
Bazmaru and the Girl of the Wind Aeris grew up in a marine zoo. This is where she took her first steps and learned to swim, and this is where she died, after diving into the dolphin pool. When she came back to life, she awoke thousands of cubic meters underwater. At her side there was a strange boy with blue skin. During her final days, she had surprised him playing among the dolphins, and she was trying to rejoin him when the accident happened. He says his name is Bazmaru. He snatched her away from death. But at what price! To bring her back to life, the blue boy used Pounamu, a rock that transformed the body of Aeris and endowed her with gills. The rock wedged itself into the base of her neck. Now she wants to get rid of it and reverse the process.
childhood in Normandy, “among cows and apples.” She studied modern literature and linguistics and she worked at a children’s bookshop. A collector of rare words and ideas for novels, Maëlle Fierpied finds joy in the richness of the world. Diving into different galaxies and exploring new worlds is, according to her, the best way to fight monotony.
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
27
AGE
© Rights reserved
12+
Writing without a point of departure has always taken her far: while continuing to write for children, Nathalie Kuperman has published several novels for adults, including Les raisons de mon crime (Gallimard), which received the Closerie des Lilas literary prize of 2012. She also writes for radio and comic strips.
112 pages
The Boy Who Loved Two Girls Who Didn’t Love Him The first time Louis saw Mona, it was in nursery school, and she threw her rattle at his head. He cried, but continued playing with her. Twelve years later, nothing has really changed: Mona continues to lead him around by the nose. Louis never complained, until today. Mona didn’t call him as promised, and he makes a fuss about it. Louis discovers he’s crazy, crazy in love with his childhood friend. But it can’t go on any longer. He decides to stop the suffering. As of now, Louis will be a cool guy, the distant type, even a bit snobby, the type nothing and no one can touch. The kind of guy all the girls fall in love with.
SOLD Italian
28
SOLD World Spanish (Spain excluded)
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
SOLD German Korean
AGE
© S. Andersen
11+
Scriptwriter and director for theater and film,
Claire Maugendre has
266 pages
Lili Babylon Lou is going into high school. She knows what she’s leaving behind her: the boredom of middle school, the stormy heat of summer, fights between her parents. But what is she going to find in front of her? There’s the dream life, hiphop classes, and all the photos she takes in the apartment complex. There’s life that comes together with all the neighbors in the building. And above all there’s Lili, Lou’s big sister. Lili the elusive. Lili who has suddenly started celebrating Ramadan and wearing a headscarf. Lili who is going far, far away. To where?
thought a lot about issues relating to the headscarf, minorities, and working-class culture. In this first novel, she blends small-scale and grand history, diving into the daily life of housing projects. The result is a joyous rewriting of our collective history, with its revolts and the rage of life.
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
29
AGE
© C. Rocard
12+
Marie-Aude Murail’s latest novel was born after meeting a young actor from the Dramatic Art Conservatory in Paris. This novel about apprenticeship is also about love. The theater allows three young apprentice actors to find their own words and their own way to respond to the question, “How do I say I love you when I’m a teenager?”
SOLD Catalan, English (UK), German, Hebrew Hungarian, Italian Korean, Lithuanian Portuguese, Slovenian World Spanish Swedish, Thai, Turkish
30
SOLD Catalan, German World Spanish
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
SOLD German 272 pages
3000 Ways to Say I Love You One evening Chloé, Bastien and Neville’s teacher took them to the theater for the first time, to see a performance of Don Juan by Molière. That night changed their lives. They decided they would become actors! Mr. Johnson, the most reputed teacher, accepts the three of them into his class at the dramatic art conservatory. Chloé is going to have to reconcile the theater classes with the intense pace of preparatory classes that she has just entered. Bastien, ready to do anything to make people laugh, thinks that watching a video of the famous comedian Louis de Funès is enough to learn Harpagon’s tirade. The gloomy, gorgeous Neville is afraid of doing what he must for his ambition, of being someone else in order to finally know who he is. Will the theater forever link the pretty young lead actress, the Jack of comedy and the romantic hero that Mr. Johnson saw in them?
AGE
© J. Raimbault
12+
Tania Sollogoub is a
238 pages
Jaurès and His Last Friend On a street in Paris, there is a window lit up beneath the roof of a building. Inside, a man is writing an editorial for the newspaper L’Humanité. His name is Jean Jaurès. His writings, the stand he takes, and his profound desire to change the world have put him in danger of being assassinated. The people of Paris have sworn to protect him. They are young and old; their names are Suzanne, Lucien, Mallavec, and Paul. At the end of July in 1914, these people don’t want war, and no one believes it will happen. Paul is 15, and his mind is devoured by the crazy love he holds for Madeleine, a young girl from a bourgeois family whom he is not allowed to talk to. On this night in Paris, as he climbs the steps that lead to Jaurès’ room, Paul does not know that this man is going to give him the strength to change his destiny.
serious person who has not given up on changing the world. Because she is both an economist and a novelist, she cannot observe movements in history without imagining their concrete repercussions on the lives and destinies of people. This stirring novel about fear, fraternity, and hope resembles the author. It also holds much in common with the novels of Émile Zola and Roger Martin du Gard, writers who mean a lot to her.
l’école des loisirs
FA L L 2 0 1 3
31
Released in 2014 by Some of our titles are on the road again, as graphic novels with Rue de Sèvres, part of l’école des loisirs group!
cover in progress
cover in progress cover in progress
SOLD English (Australia New Zealand), German Greek, Italian
cover in progress
No Pasarán, the game Christian Lehmann and Antoine Carrion
Four sisters Cati Baur after Malika Ferdjoukh
SOLD Catalan, German Japanese, Korean, World Spanish, Vietnamese
Ms. Isabelle Darthy - idarthy@ecoledesloisirs.com +33 1 45 48 61 22 Ms. Bertille Amortegui - bamortegui@ecoledesloisirs.com +33 1 45 48 22 55 Ms. Marija Gaudry-Bickauskaite - mgaudry@ecoledesloisirs.com +33 1 45 48 22 88
Frankfurt Book Fair - Hall 6.1 Stand B 111
www.ecoledesloisirs.com O u r
R ep res en t at ives
GREECE Iris Literary Agency Athens Ms. Catherine Fragou +30 21 02 43 24 73 irislet@otenet.gr
SPANISH & PORTUGUESE SPEAKING COUNTRIES Torrubia Agency Barcelona Ms. Isabelle Torrubia +34 93 218 78 67 isabelle@torrubia-agency.es