Editor's Introduction

As an only child who grew up in France in a family that chose to wait until I left for college to buy their first television set, I lived surrounded with books. Because I was the daughter and granddaughter of two pre-elementary school principals, great care was taken to provide me with all the books I needed for instruction and amusement. Some of the heroes of my childhood include Puss in Boots in an edition of Perrault’s fairy tales illustrated by Gustave Doré; Sophie, the not so modèle little girl, one among many of my beloved characters from the Comtesse de Ségur’s prolific fiction; Captain Nemo, my favorite of all of Jules Verne’s intrepid explorers; Bécassine and Babar; Saint-Exupéry’s Petit Prince, and Sempé’s Petit Nicolas; Astérix the Gaul and Tintin the Belgian, to name but a few whose fame has crossed the Atlantic Ocean. But there were many more: all the picture books of Caroline with her entourage of animal friends and all the Albums du Père Castor—the adventures of Little Daisy, Little Raindrop, Marlaguette, and Michka the Bear may remain forever obscure for many young Americans, but not for me, nor for several generations of French school children.

The articles in this special issue devoted to French children’s literature introduce the readers of The Lion and the Unicorn to—or reacquaint them with—books written for children and young adults in France during the twentieth century. The contributors to this volume present comic books, picture books, collections of tales, fiction written by a diversity of French authors, some who would otherwise remain forever unknown on this side of the Atlantic; some like Caumery and Pinchon, who have somehow survived the trials of time; some universally famous like Tournier and Le Clézio; some controversial, like the propagandists who took it upon themselves to rewrite the fairy tale during the Vichy era; and many others. Also, thanks to Catherine Velay-Vallantin’s homage to Marc Soriano and William Moebius’s review of Jean Perrot’s recent book Art baroque, Art d’enfance, American specialists in the field of children’s literature will appreciate the significant contributions to children’s literature scholarship—as rare as they may be—made by French critics and scholars who have gone beyond national boundaries to become part of an international dialogue. Readers of The Lion and the Unicorn may be able to draw from French children’s literature scholarship to enrich their own analyses of children’s books written in English. A recent article by Jean Perrot, published in The Lion and the Unicorn, will provide invaluable information on the current status of French children’s literature, as well as an inventory of all the research tools available in France.

Margaret Higonnet’s “War Games” investigates children’s literature during World War I. This article touches first on some of the canonical figures of French children’s literature in the early part of the twentieth century with, in particular, two famous series of comic strips that were quite in vogue during the First World War: Forton’s Les pieds nickelés, a funny trio in a “French comic-strip version” of the Three Stooges, and Caumery and Pinchon’s Bécassine, a young simpleton from Britanny who embarks on a series of adventures and meets with countless misfortunes. Those ancestors of our modern comic strips are still published in contemporary editions that emphasize their old-fashioned and outdated aspects while indulging in a moment of nostalgia. Higonnet also alludes to another famous character of French children’s fiction, Babar, the little elephant created by Jean de Bruhoff during the interwar period, whose adventures fill the five picture books Jean completed before he died of tuberculosis in 1937, when his son Laurent took over his father’s task. The main purpose of Higonnet’s article, however, is to help us discover the perspective on the horror of war by three authors—three women—Marthe Serrie-Heim, Charlotte Schaller-Mouillot, and Lucie Paul-Margueritte, whose books have never been reprinted and whose names have nearly disappeared...