Ebook: Les vacances du petit nicolas

I'm using this book to learn French. For that, it is very useful because the same vocabulary is used over and over, so if you didn't learn it on page 2, you'll probably see it on page 3, 11 or 20. This is a very good thing, for repetition is the only way to reinforce and solidify what you are learning. The first thing you'll learn about Petit Nicolas is that he cries a lot. Beaucoup. That was the first phrase I learned: mettre à pleurer. I'm an advanced beginner, so I never get more than half a page read before I have to look something up. So it's rather slow going - arduous, in fact. One of the things that you should know is that this book uses a lot of "la langue familière" - that is - a lot of figurative language that doesn't have an exact translation. If you have a good dictionary, many of these figurative expressions will be in there. But there are a few things that I have no idea what they mean, exactly. And don't be surprised if you see some grammatically incorrect things such as the "ne" being left out of sentences in the negative, which is very common in everyday spoken French.

The second thing that you learn is that the father is rather impatient and he shouts a lot. I'd swear the verb "crier" is the second most used verb in this book. Personally, I'm not finding the stories all that funny or interesting, but that could be partly because it takes me forever to get more than a couple of pages read. Or it could be because the parents need marriage counseling and a lesson in parenting!

So I give it 5 stars for usefulness and 3 stars for storyline.