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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4795 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 9 of 19 10 January 2013 at 9:01am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I believe youthbooks, without being any official term, is quite a good word.
After all, there are many books intended for children from about 12 years which are however often read by adults. Even though you are not familiar with the term (which may or may not exist), osoymar, several of us understood it the same way. Young Adult books, while being an official term, is in my opinion far too often just an excuse for crap books. It is usually fantasy or sci-fi of bad quality, or just a Harlequin book covered with a bit of fantasy. Young adults (which I understand as people from 16-25, do you agree?) should read all kinds of books, to develop their taste, their personality and education. Literary fiction or better quality genre books (the differences between good and bad fantasy books, just an exemple, are enormous). Serving young adults tons of stupid books is wrong, just as it is wrong to call the stupidest books "litterature for women". Both these PR-catchy labels are quite harmful, in my opinion. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Quique Diglot Senior Member Spain cronopios.net/Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4468 days ago 183 posts - 313 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: French, German | Message 10 of 19 10 January 2013 at 12:24pm | IP Logged | ||
Take a look at Le Livre de Poche Jeunesse (unfortunately there is no way to search only for books originally written in French), Portail Européen sur la Littérature Jeunesse and the books sold at FNAC. Finally, you have Marje's suggestions. Myself, I intend to read Un sac de billes by Joseph Joffo rather sooner than later. Edited by Quique on 10 January 2013 at 12:25pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| osoymar Tetraglot Pro Member United States Joined 4522 days ago 190 posts - 344 votes Speaks: English*, German, Portuguese, Japanese Studies: Spanish, French Personal Language Map | Message 11 of 19 10 January 2013 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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I see your point, Cavesa, but I don't interpret "young adult fiction" in the way that
you do. I have a friend who writes YA fiction and describes herself as a YA author, and as I recall the general definition is that YA fiction is fiction aimed at readers roughly between 12 and 18 (although I agree that "young adult" on its own usually refers to people in the range between late teens and mid-twenties, maybe up to the late twenties). Of course, there are plenty of adults who read YA fiction, whether good or bad. I do agree that most YA literature is terrible. So is most sci-fi, most thrillers, most everything. Does youngbooks actually imply that the fiction is worth reading and that adults can read it as well? Wouldn't it be clearer to just say "quality YA fiction," etc.? I will also agree that the term "YA" is a fairly recent creation, but I don't think that prevents it from being used on older works. It might seem like "marketing-speak" but it seems to be used freely by authors and fans of the genre alike. There does seem to be some usage of "youngbooks" online, and I don't want to force anyone to use a term they find distasteful. But I do think there's value in being aware of the definition of the most commonly used term. I wish I had a great suggestion to add to this discussion to outweigh my pedantic rant here, but nothing I can think of is French- sorry! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Tsopivo Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4257 days ago 258 posts - 411 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Esperanto | Message 12 of 19 10 January 2013 at 10:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ok, I wrote a super long post but apparently, it did not work. I am a bit too lazy to type it all over again but here were some suggestions of some cycles written in French for French natives that I think would be rather easy to read for a beginner though not necessarily YA books:
- "Le cycle de l'invisible". Not a serie in the common meaning of the word but different novels on a same theme. I only read "Monsieur Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran" (very good) and "L'enfant de Noé" (less good, would still recommend it to a language learner). - "Le cycle des fourmis" or "Le cycle des anges" by Bernard Weber. Greatly enjoyed it in high school but not sure I would have enjoyed it as much if i had been an adult when I first discovered it. - "Kamo" (children serie) or "la saga malaussène" (adult serie) by Daniel Pennac based on a very vague memory of having liked it a long time ago. Not cycles but easy-reads, bestsellers French writers who had books translated in many languages, movies made and won prices. Would definitely not recommend it to a French native (except Didier van cauwelaerth) but would definitely recommend it for language learning purposes: - Mark Lévy : considered "sous-littérature" by many - Anna Gavalda : not great litterature either but better than Mark Lévy - Didier van Cauwelaerth : less successful but I quite liked some of his books (un aller-simple, l'éducation d'une fée, attirances) Also note that a lot of French "classics" are a lot easier to read than one would assume. Eg : "Candide" by Voltaire Edited by Tsopivo on 10 January 2013 at 10:28pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4795 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 13 of 19 10 January 2013 at 11:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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I certainly don't think all the YA fiction writers are bad, not at all. I read some of
them and enjoy them. I just do not think the YA fiction term has got any other purpose than marketing. Before that term, we already had Fantasy, both great and crap, we had Sci-fi, both awesome and awful, we already had all the genres that are now overlapping the YA fiction field. YA doesn't give anything new and valuable to the genre terminology, in my opinion. One should be encouraged to choose by his taste, not by his age or sex (which is why I dislike both the labels "for young" and "for women". and the stupidest books use combination "for girls" :-D). We already have the formal education system to spoil the enjoyment by recommending the choices too strongely, we don't need the bookstores to do the same. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 4995 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 14 of 19 11 January 2013 at 7:48am | IP Logged | ||
Juman, I'm not sure what you mean by "youthbooks", but assume that - given your mention of Narnia and Harry Potter - you're open to trying children's (rather than just "young adult") books. I've been greatly enjoying Le Petit Nicolas series, by René Goscinny, illus by Jean-Jacques Sempé. Wikipedia article: Wikipedia Amazon France listing for the first title in the series: Amazon.fr English translations of two stories, legally reprinted: Guardian . They'll give you an idea of Goscinny's humour and Sempé's illustrations, both of which are quite, quite delightful. I particularly like the second story, "My Watch". As further bonus, Goscinny's writing and Anthea Bell's English translations are both very good; and a real pleasure with a text which one might read twice or thrice. I'll try to have both English and French editions of a book. Depending on how difficult it is, I might - working chapter by chapter - start with the English version to get the sense of the section, then read the French while consulting the English from time to time for certain words/lines/passages. Since I'll often choose books which I'll know to be worth re-reading (from having read them previously in English), this typically brings me to the third round with a text. Updated to add: I noticed the comment in your log about wanting to improve your pronunciation. FNAC has CD "audiobook" versions of a number of the titles, including the first one: http://tinyurl.com/fnacpncd . (Someone's also posted the audio online, but I'll refrain from putting the link for that up, as I expect the AudioCD is still protected by copyright..?) I also have a short post (mainly a vocab list) on my log about Le Petit Nicolas, if you're interested: post 128 Edited by songlines on 11 January 2013 at 8:41am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4695 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 15 of 19 11 January 2013 at 11:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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Songlines, I am interested in Le Petit Nicolas, especially using the English edition
alongside the French edition. But I can't really tell from the titles which English book matches the book simply titled, "Le Petit Nicolas", which I assume is the first book in the series. Is the equivalent English book the one simply titled, "Nicolas"? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 4995 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 19 12 January 2013 at 7:55am | IP Logged | ||
Yes. Though it's actually spelled "Nicholas" (with an "h") in English. (The names of the other children also undergo changes in translation.) Book Depository: Nicholas. There don't seem to be Google or Amazon previews, but the description on Book Depository matches:"Follow Nicholas as he runs away, buys his mother a birthday gift, and worries about showing his parents his report card". (My English translation was a hardcover from the library, so I can't match the cover illustrations.) ---- I'm currently going through a volume of Nicolas stories which were, I think, published posthumously. In one, "Chez le coiffeur", the boys arrive in a pack at the hair salon/barbershop. One of the barbers looks up and, upon seeing them, opens his eyes wide and exclaims, "Non! Oh non!" , to which the other exhorts, "Courage, Marcel!" By the end of the story, an illustration shows him on a step-ladder, wordlessly crossing out the word "enfants" from their store signage, "Coiffeur - Messieurs, Dames, Enfants". Edited by songlines on 14 January 2013 at 6:32pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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