Martine features in an iconic series of French children’s books. Sometimes she gets to hang out with Jean-lou and Sophie. The pictures in the books are very recognisable.
The other day, in the parents-in-law’s house, I saw Martine or possibly some of her friends lurking at the bottom of a pile of children’s books. This was unsurprising as their house is filled with classic French children’s books which belonged to my husband and his siblings when they were little. What I expected to see was something like this:
What I actually saw was:
I’m hoping that someone else out there will find this as odd as I do. My mother-in-law used also pick up a lot of books for her children from the Irish language publishers “An Gúm”. Apparently the Irish rights for translating foreign language publications were cheap. I still find it hard to believe that anyone was convinced that the scene below was typical of an Irish beach in summer:
If you want more Martine and friends in Irish, you need only say the word but I fear it may be a minority interest.
Have to say that the Gaelic version does look colder – I noticed that the authors featured in my kids book-clubs (we’re in France) are predominantly Anglo or Dutch.
j
I remember those well from my childhood – definite lack of freckles and goosebumps when compared to the actual Irish beach experience. There was another one where they went to the zoo, which I came across recently when sorting out some of our old books for my nieces (who attend a naoÃnra. The main inauthenticity was that all the little girls’ dresses were so short that you could see their knickers, and this was obviously intentional. I balked at having to explain this.