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Jacques Et La Canne à Sucre

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Children of all ages love stories, especially when there's an element of fantasy. Meeting up with writer Shiela Hebert-Collins at a breakfast table while we were both guests at an inn in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, showed me how some writers are working hard to keep North America's French culture alive through stories. Hebert-Collins uses her own French-Acadian heritage to teach children about the Louisiana French-Acadian heritage by writing Cajun fairy tales.

Usually, it's difficult to explain the English translations of French words to children unless they learn and use the words in familiar ways. But writer Sheila Hebert-Collins, a native of Louisiana living in Naples, Florida, has one clever way of bringing French heritage and language to children. Her Cajun fairy tales are spattered with a variety of French words intertwined into the storytelling. Franco-Americans who grew up speaking French will enjoy these clever bi-lingual children's stories.

Hebert-Collins and I happened to sit at the same breakfast table when we were visiting Annapolis Royal, in Nova Scotia. We were staying at the same Victorian bed and breakfast mansion which was loaded with antique furniture and several crystal chandeliers hanging from the breakfast room ceiling. Hebert-Collins was wearing a sweatshirt with the screen print image of a blue, white and red French-Acadian flag printed on the front. We immediately struck up a conversation about the children's books she writes for Pelican Publishing Company, in Gretna, Louisiana.

For example, "Jacques et la Canne a Sucre" is a Cajun version of the Jack and the Beanstalk children's story. In the Cajun version, Hebert-Collins writes about a sugar cane pole instead of a bean stalk. Moreover, the Cajun version uses many French words in the dialogue mixed with sentences written in a vernacular English common to the Cajun culture.

Most important, the French words Hebert-Collins uses are given phonetic pronunciation and an English translation in the footnotes of every colorful and beautifully illustrated page of the story. In this retelling of the familiar tale, poor Jacques and his mother struggle to survive by living on a houseboat on the Louisiana bayou. Jacques and his mother earn a meager living by selling crawfish.

The story starts when Jacques mother tells him to "Dépêche-toi, before other crawfish farmers get to market!"

In other words, she wants Jacques to sell the crawfish they caught before competitors take away their small business. At the end of the page, the French words "dépêche-toi" are phonetically written as "day-pesh-twah" and the English translation is "hurry up". Later in the story, an old Cajun sees Jacques and asks, "T garcon. What you got in dat sack, dere?" Again, at the bottom of the dialogue, the French colloquial "t garcon" is given the phonetic pronunciation "tee gahr-SOHN" and the meaning is "little boy".

Although other Cajun writers write entertaining cultural folk tales, Hebert-Collins' books stand out because of the familiar uses of French colloquial words in her characters' dialogues, intertwined with vernacular English phrases commonly used by bayou people.

Hebert-Collins signed a copy of "Jacques et la Canne a Sucre" while the two of us visited over our delicious breakfast. She writes in her inscription, "What luck to meet you here in Nova Scotia! Enjoy this Cajun tale and remember me."