Grammar Is a Sweet, Gentle Song

by Érik Orsenna

Book Overview

At the heart of its message is an impassioned plea for the magic and power of words. Jeanne, the tough-minded ten-year-old narrator, and Thomas, fourteen, are traveling to America on an ocean liner to visit their mother when a violent storm sinks their ship and tosses them up on an island. They are unhurt, but the shock of the experience leaves them without the ability to speak. Taken into the care of Monsieur Henri, an elderly islander, Jeanne and...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807615315
• ISBN13: 9780807615317
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: George Braziller
• Length: 120 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.2" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Translating profanity. Yikes!

I love, love, love, love, heart, heart, heart this book. I read it in French a few months ago, and I was curious about how some of the elements were translated (like the gender of nouns, as English doesn't have that feature). Obviously, for those who need it, this is a way of accessing a foreign language book. I was just a little disappointed by the force of the profanity. It's one of the hardest things to translate, but I think the "c-word" was a little bit strong for what was there in the first place. I give the original French version 5 stars. Lost in translation, indeed.

Very worth reading

I received this book as a gift from my former colleagues. Although I don't like reading too much I was through with this wonderful written novel in one day. It is the story of two children who are stranded on an island - an island consisting of people with love for language and words and shops with wonderful words: long words, short words, rare words, nonsense words. Jeanne and Thomas are fascinated by the beauty, wealth, amount and variety of words: Lonely nouns are looking to marry well suiting adjectives. Superlatives escaping their dominant owners... And then Jeanne and Thomas meet some words on another island who escaped the people using them. Will these words find their way home, jump into the people's mouth and enjoy their lives in wordy symbioses with them? Or will our two young heroes understand the necessity of mixing up languages (like it is heavily done in German), forget about using the words of their ancestors, bury the words of their dialects, or have no words at all? Less words, less to talk about, less problems? Read the book and you will find out yourself! I read the German translation and loved it!

Brilliant!

I am a French teacher and *cannot wait* to get this book into the hands of my students. It has such a cute way of explaining essential grammatical concepts without being pedantic at all. Set on a magical island where the protagonist lands after a shipwreck, the novel talks about adjectives, for example, wanting to "marry" nouns (for gender agreement); about how adverbs are loners, and how verbs need a "time" (and there are different "clocks" to illustrate the tenses). There is a musical subtheme as well. Ultimately, it's a book for word lovers and Francophones. As a member of the Academie Francaise, the author Orsenna is clearly playing with the pure joy of language. He delights in using an incredible vocabulary--but it is not necessary to look up each word to enjoy the novel. It's all about the pleasure of the word...and the page. Enjoy!

Beautiful!

I'm not sure whether or not every francophone would love this book, but I did. You might not think that a book about grammar is something to read outside of French class, but this one is worth it. Yes, there is a plot, and the grammar that is presented in the book is done in such a way that you won't forget it. C'est vraiment une belle histoire!

Really enjoyable & well written

I wish I read this book when I was learning French in High School. The story is fun and the concept is fresh. Since I am still learning French, I think I had to look up every 20 words or so in a dictionary. It was worth it.