I was very excited to receive Mr Leon's Paris recently. It was an unexpected gift bestowed by Emma from WordsandPeace, after I won the prize for contributing to the 2014 Books on France Reading Challenge. I had a $15 gift voucher to spend. Of course, I picked yet another book about Paris. I'd never heard of this book before, but loved the cover on sight. Soon, with Emma's generosity it was mine. Imagine my unexpected joy to find a signed copy (by both Author and Translator) before me!
Mr Leon is a Parisian taxi driver, about to retire, and looking back on his thirty years in the game, and all his memorable fares.
It is a cute book about finding a world, and many adventures inside my favourite city. It all turns out to be a riff on fun Parisian street names.
They do sound much more charmant in French than in English of course, which really made me wonder about the French language original. I'm more than curious about that now. I'd never heard of author/illustrator Barroux before, it's always nice to have your boundaries stretched, even by little picture books.
One possibly slight annoyance. Mr Leon says "But I'm always snug inside my yellow car", later calling it canary yellow.
But it's clearly orange, not yellow. Why print it like that? Or is it the translation? Another reason to buy the original in French.
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| Dreaming of France is a wonderful Monday meme from Paulita at An Accidental Blog |
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| French Bingo 2015 |
6 comments:
Found you through Dreaming of France. This book sounds cute but like you the colour of the taxi and description as canary yellow would irritate me!
Louise, So would this book be appropriate for a child? Just curious because sometimes what the French see as appropriate push the bounds here in the U.S. I love these illustrations. Sorry about the yellow though. Thanks for playing along.
Welcome Phoebe- although I see you do more than Dream of France...
Paulita, it's a picture book, perfectly appropriate for children- there's lots of intricate illustrations that they would love.
It would be interesting to read it in French & see what color they actually called the taxi.
ohh la la -lucky you-what a lovely illustrated book.
Or maybe it printed a little off?
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