Rentrée Littéraire: Alice Brière-Haquet's fairy tales
- Le Nerd Librarian
- Jun 24, 2019
- 2 min read
Last Monday, I was lucky enough to be attend Page des Libraires' presentation of the Rentrée Littéraire (i.e. the French tradition of releasing most of the new titles in September).
Today, I'm focusing on a very prolific author (whom I personnally didn't know, but that's on me).
Alice Brière-Haquet
ABH writes for children, and works as an editor and translator. She wrote her Doctorate Thesis on modern versions of Perrault’s fairy tales.
In September, she has not one, but TWO books of fairy tales coming out: an “oniric” fairy tale, Le si petit roi, and a political one, Les trois (autres) petits cochons.
Le si petit roi is a more classically-illustrated fairy tale, whereas Les trois (autres) petits cochons plays with the relationship between image and text, so that children can have fun spotting the discrepancies. There are also intertextual references for them to find if they are familiar with the original story.
When asked why she wrote such different stories, Alice Brière-Haquet answered that after reading Penser dans un monde mauvais, she could not bring herself to write stories that weren’t designed to make her young readers reflect about the world around them. “The published word is public,” she said, “and therefore must be meaningful in some way.”
She added that she had gone through a writing crisis, and was thinking about publishing fewer, yet more meaningful, stories. She is currently very interested in the topic of the “freedom/safety trade-off”, as this is a timeless theme that can be debated with readers of every age group.
In the original Trois petits cochons, the mason pig wins. Brière-Haquet gives her happy ending to the hippy pig, to emphasize the fact that peer pressure and what the conservative majority deems right isn’t necessarily so for everyone.
Can’t wait to check out both of these books during the Rentrée Littéraire!
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