Les P'tites Poules... in Chinese

This is another post on Chinese books. Lesley-Anne found this series of books in the library a few years ago and she thoroughly enjoyed them. It's actually a translation of the French series of books called Les P'tites Poules by Christian Jolibois (author) and Christian Heinrich (illustrator). The stories are of little effervescent chickens and their very funny adventures.

One of my quarrels with Chinese fiction books for children is that they either tend to be very moralistic or just plain boring. But this series is different (maybe because it's not originally written in Chinese!) The pictures are brilliantly animated, very reminiscent of the style of the Nicholas books (incidentally also by French author and illustrator). The storylines are so comical that you can't help laughing when you read them.

For instance, in Book 1, the story tells of Carmela the chicken who was not interested in learning how to lay eggs like all the other chickens in the coop.

She dreamed of going out to sea in search of magical creatures so she ran away one night. Unfortunately, she was caught by a pirate ship whose crew wanted to eat her, so she struck a bargain to provide them with eggs everyday if they would spare her life. Which she almost couldn't deliver since she never practised laying eggs! Hilarious.


Eventually she managed to find her way back to the coop with a rooster mate and they produced a little rebel of their own, Carmelito, who decided he wanted to own a star... and that's Book 2.

I estimate the books to be pitched at the lower primary level, so they're just right for Andre now. I have no idea what's the name of the series in Chinese but the title of the first book is 我想去看海 under the author Jolibois. I think there are 8 or 9 books in the series. At the library, if you find the first one, you should be able to find the rest.