Le Petit Nicolas

Le Petit Nicolas is a series of stories by French writers Jean-Jacques Sempé and René Goscinny. The stories are told from the point-of-view of a young French child. Though seemingly geared towards a younger audience, the stories work expertly as a primer for French language study. There is also a CD set of the stories, though most critics prefer the written content based on its charming pictures and ease of use.

Given that Nicolas is a young French boy, the stories are entirely comical. Nicolas is a young boy who is extremely good-natured and rambunctious. Yet he and his friends are still filled with the overwhelming emotions and contradictions of “being manly” and trying to grow up too fast. Nicolas and his friends are anxious to be manly, and as such, are obsessed with the task of establishing their mark on the world. The stories offer a refreshingly candid approach to this concept as Nicolas’s youth produces humor, not annoyance, at this take on his “manly” life and growing up.

One of the most-liked stories is “Louisette,” where a young girl comes to Nicolas’s house with her mother for tea. Nicolas wants nothing to do with the girl or having tea as these are not manly endeavors. Yet his mother dresses him up (like a clown, opines Nicolas), warning him that he must make a good impression. Nicolas is almost brought to tears on a number of occasions during the visit. And this, of course, angers him even more. Men are not supposed to cry. Moreover, men are supposed to be dominant and superior to girls. Girls cry, not men. With these imperatives under his belt, the entire story is comical as it unfolds, with Louisette being superior and Nicolas trying not to cry. Louisette tells him he looks like a monkey, and outwits him with ease. She is also extremely athletic, and is able to leap out of Nicolas’s way before he can decide on punching her or pulling her hair. To make matters worse, she is continuously batting her eyelashes at their mothers, who view her as a model child.

The rest of the stories tend to follow the same narrative approach as “Louisette.” Nicolas and his template for how the world should work is consistently dashed by others. Just as Louisette makes for a formidable foe, other characters, and the world-at-large, make for stark contradictions to Nicolas’s views on manhood and the roles of the sexes. Again, given that this is all coming from the point-of-view of a young child, the narrative comes off as funny and engaging. As most critics agree, the reader cannot help but fall in love with Nicolas.

The narrative is often told through run-on sentences, thus giving the stories the believability of being told by a young child. Nicolas has so much to say that he often crams it all in within the space of a sentence, for better or worse. His emotions and reactions to the world around him are captured as if he is thinking them out loud. Some critics mention that the stories’ difficulty level is tied into aspects like the run-on-sentence writing approach, while others point to the very real fact that it is an effective language-learning book in the guise of a child’s book. For example, one story mentions the various articles of clothing that Nicolas and his friends are wearing when they are pretending to be cowboys. The words are difficult to understand for many, and as such, can only get easier with practice.

Le Petit Nicolas is wonderful book of stories that shows how even the smallest individual can have a vivid world full of rules and expectations. Nicolas and his friends are set on being manly, and approach the world in this way. His run-ins with people like Louisette are symbolic of the individual’s need to adjust worldviews based on new and better information. Nicolas’s journey highlights the process of growing up and assimilating other beliefs and worldviews in an effort to have a comprehensive view of the ever-changing world.