Nicholas [Hardcover]

René Goscinny (Author), Jean-Jacques Sempé (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 9 and up | Grade Level: 4 and up | Series: Nicholas

Book Description Nicholas is the first of five books that bring to life the day to day adventures of a young school boy - amusing, endearing and always in trouble. An only child, Nicholas, appears older at school than he does as home and his touchingly naive reaction to situations, cut through the preconceptions of adults and result in a formidable sequence of escapades. This first book in the series contains a collection of nineteen individual stories where, in spite of trying to be good, Nicholas and his friends always seem to end up in some kind of mischief. Whether in the school room, at home, or in the playground, their exuberance often takes over and the results are calamitous – at least for their teachers and parents. Whether confusing the photographer hired to take the class picture, dealing with having to wear glasses for the first time, or trying desperately to help the teacher when the school inspector pays a visit, Nicholas always manages to make matters worse. Nicholas was awarded the 2006 Batchelder Honor Award, which recognizes outstanding children's books published in a foreign language and translated into English. Nicholas was also recognized by The Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) as a 2006 Notable Children's Book.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 4-6–This classic book about a mischievous schoolboy and his friends, originally published in French in 1959, is now available in English. The expertly translated text is enlivened by artwork by a New Yorker cartoonist to create the unforgettable milieu of Nicholas and his rowdy friends. A collection of 19 escapades, the stories introduce the protagonist and his cohorts as they wreak havoc out of simple, everyday situations at school, on the playground, and at home. Pestering the substitute teacher, trying to adopt a lost dog, and quarreling over soccer positions (only to find there isn't even a ball) make for hilarious and timeless anecdotes that will have readers giggling. Adults will also appreciate Nicholas's childlike perception of each troublesome situation through his comments at the end of each adventure. These charming vignettes beg to be shared aloud in a classroom or library setting. A delightful choice for spicing up middle-grade collections and for exposing kids to stories from abroad.–Jennifer Cogan, Bucks County Free Library, Doylestown, PA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"...Liberally endowed with Sempe's tiny, comic cartoon figures, these whimsical mini-adventures will captivate readers..." -- Kirkus Reviews

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9 and up
  
• Hardcover: 136 pages
• Publisher: Phaidon Press; Tra edition (June 14, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0714845299
• ISBN-13: 978-0714845296
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #332,076 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Best known as the author of Asterix, Goscinny is
also the talent behind the scenario of Lucky Luke, the hugely popular
comic book of 'the cowboy who shoots faster than his shadow'. Goscinny
was born on 11 August 1926 in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, the son
of Stanislas (Simkha) from Warsaw and of Anna Beresniak from
Khodorkow, a small Ukrainian village. In 1928, his parents took him to
Argentina, where his father, a chemical engineer, had been
seconded. He spent a happy childhood in Buenos Aires, and studied at
the French Lyce just before the Second World War. He had a habit of
making every one laugh in class, probably to compensate for a natural
shyness. He started drawing very early on, inspired by the illustrated
stories which he enjoyed reading. In 1945, he emigrated to the United
States. "I went to the United States to work with Walt Disney" he was
to say later ""but Walt Disney didn't know that"". He found himself in
New York, jobless, alone and totally broke. The next 6 years, which he
spent in New York, are often considered his formative years. As he
said "It was not so bad...it toughened me up, although I would have
liked it better if others had been toughened up on my behalf". It is
during these years that he met his first friends, some who were to
publish "Mad" in 1945, and others with whom he was to collaborate for
a long time to come. Among these was Maurice de Bvre aka Morris, the
cartoonist and first author of Lucky Luke. He also met Georges
Troisfontaines, the boss of the World Press Agency in Belgium, who
persuaded Goscinny to work for him. He returned to Europe in 1951 for
this purpose, but was fired in 1956 for trying to put in place a
charter to protect the status of cartoonists and scenarist. The years
until the creation of the magazine "Pilote" were years of transition,
when Goscinny's talent matured and he seized upon many
opportunities. Besides his collaboration with Morris on the Lucky Luke
series from 1955 onwards, Goscinny worked on the scenario of "Le petit
Nicolas" (Little Nicholas) in cartoon form with its creator, Sempe. In
1959 the magazine "Pilote" was launched. Goscinny found his place in the
editorial team among some of his faithful friends from World
Press. The aim of "Pilote" was to change radically the way that the
graphic novel ("the BD") would be perceived in France, and competed
with "Tintin" and "Spirou" magazines on their own territories. How best to
go about that task than by inventing an astute little Gaul, give him a
large size sidekick and place their adventures within a little village
of irreducible Gauls whose names all end in -ix? Asterix is born. The
bande dessinee enters adulthood. He married Gilberte Pollaro-Millo in
1967. In 1968 his daughter Anne is born. Many young authors owe their
fame to Goscinny, who opened for them the pages of "Pilote". While
working on scenarios for the television and the cinema and on many
different texts, Goscinny headed Pilote in one capacity or another
until his death on 5 November 1977.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars such a great book!, October 17, 2005

By 

Daniel Ford (at danford dot net) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nicholas (Hardcover)

A while ago I was heading off to join a boat on which my two granddaughters are the junior crew. At home they'd had a pal named Nicholas, so I figured they'd like this book. Little did I know what a hit I'd made! Not only did the girls (aged 3 and 5) oblige me to do a daily reading, but after the first chapter I realized that I'd also captivated the rest of the crew, ranging in age from 30 to 43. All work stopped at five o'clock, and the two children and six adults gathered for the next chapter of Nicholas's adventure.

Not only was the original wonderfully done (on that I have the testimony of the girls' mother, who read it for a French class in high school) but the English translation is perfect. Nicholas and his friends are still little French schoolboys, but the names of the adults and some of the children have been changed to their English equivalents. (The snooty rich kid is now Cuthbert.)

I think part of their appeal is that they aren't politically correct. They swear ("big fat stupid ninny!") and smoke cigars and beat each other up and run away from home. The girls are terrible manipulators. On the other hand, Nicholas cries from time to time. It's all very satisfactory!

I'm delighted to see that in Britain a second volume is being published this month (October 2005). With any luck, it will soon be available in the U.S. I know of two children and six adults who can't wait!

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finest flower of the French, March 20, 2006

By 

E. R. Bird "Ramseelbird" (Manhattan, NY) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nicholas (Hardcover)

If you know Anthea Bell, you know her for one reason. She's the woman who translates almost all of Cornelia Funke's children's fiction. If you know the artist Sempe you also probably know him for one reason. He does those delightful little covers for the New Yorker that strike everyone as utterly sublime. And if you know Rene Goscinny then you are probably French. There is no other explanation for it. Even though Mssr. Goscinny created "Asterix", has won multiple awards for his cartoons, and became (according to his bio anyway) "an internationally successful children's author", he's not exactly common knowledge here in America. In fact, if you were to stop your average joe on the street and do a little free association with the words, "French children's books" you're going to get two kinds of answers. They're either going to say, "Little Prince" and start reminiscing about 9th grade French class, or they're going to say, "Tintin" and then rush to the nearest bookstore to read them. It's not Goscinny's fault. He was never properly introduced to American children before. Now all that has changed and it's thanks to, of all publishers, Phaidon. Yes, the company that usually prefers to publish glossy glorious art collections with titles like, "The Photography Book", has now dipped its toe into the murky waters of children's literature. With translations, however, they're fairly safe. "Nicholas", originally published in 1959, remains a uniquely droll little series of small boyhood adventures.

Nicholas attends an all boy's school somewhere in France. Where he lives is not especially important. What is important is that he and his friends often have ripping good times, much to the dismay of a variety of authority figures. As the book goes on, you come to know certain characters particularly well. There is the teacher's pet, Cuthbert, of whom we are told multiple times, "Cuthbert wears glasses so we can't pound him as much as we'd like to". There is Eddie, who would love to do the bulk of the hitting, and Alec who is always eating. Geoffrey has a father who is rich and who buys his son all kinds of expensive costumes and Rufus has a dad who's a policeman. Then there's Nicholas himself. He's just your average kid, sometimes running away from home, sometimes playing hooky, and sometimes driving his poor mom insane when he stays home sick from school. Collected as a little book of nineteen different stories and illustrated with aplomb by the irresistible Sempe, the book is both beautiful and incredibly funny. It's one of those titles that would make for wonderful reading aloud, whether to a class of rapscallions equal to Nicholas's crew, or one-on-one with a child before they go to sleep.

The nice thing about the book is the way in which it conveys ridiculous and downright insane occurrences with as understated a manner as possible. There are countless fights between thirty+ boys, usually ending with Nicholas saying something along the lines of, "and we were having a really fabulous time!". Sometimes, however, the jokes are so sublime you could miss them if you weren't paying close attention. When Nicholas wants to buy his mom some flowers for her birthday, "I took all the money out of my piggy bank and luckily there was a lot because quite by chance Mom had given me some the day before". Another great moment comes when Nicholas's parents promise that if he comes in the top ten in the math test he'll get a bike. He does, "because there were only eleven of us doing the test, all the rest of the class was away with colds, and the eleventh was Matthew who always comes last anyway, but it didn't matter for him because he's got a bike already". Goscinny has a penchant for run-on sentences, as you can see. Credit Anthea Bell's translation, then. She conveys both the subtle humor of the book as well as the author's long, rambling, but ultimately satistifying sentence construction. After you read the stories through, you even begin to pick out little patterns here and there. It seems to me that Rufus is excellent at getting all his friends in trouble, but he rarely gets caught himself. And Eddie may hit other kids a lot, but his home life doesn't sound too keen.

How much of this book owes its popularity to Sempe, I have to wonder. Certainly the illustrator's work gives "Nicholas" just the right kind of levity. If you've never had a chance to see a work by Sempe, this book will come as an unexpected treat. Using the thinnest of pen lines and the occasional inkwash, each picture is a misleadingly simple and loving work.

Written in 1960, one goes through the book in fear that "Nicholas" will contain moments unpleasant to our contemporary ears. "Tintin", after all, doesn't come off especially well these days. But except for the odd reference to Indians and kids getting slapped by their parents, "Nicholas" holds up pretty well. Some parents may be shocked at how often the kids in this book fight at just the slightest of provocations. It's worthwhile to note though that not a single kid ever seems to get injured in the process. There are plenty of punches and kicks, but you get the general impression that very few of these actually connect. Some people would moan that there are very few girls in this book. Be that as it may, the one girl who does show up (Louise) faces down Nicholas on his own turf and beats him time and again in playing with his airplane or soccer. Does he get mad at her? Not a bit of it! When Louise manages to kick a soccer ball through the garage window he doesn't get any supper that night, "but I didn't mind. Louise is great! We'll get married when we're grown up. She kicks a really fantastic goal!".

It's nice to find a new children's classic. Something that will really inspire great love over the years. And with Phaidon giving it packaging that's bound to last for years and years, "Nicholas" shall be appreciated for generations. A great book, a great combination of artistic talents, and a wonderful find.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Oui, Oui!, July 18, 2005

By 

L.D. Mit (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nicholas (Hardcover)

I had not heard of this book (originally published in France in 1959) before I came across it in a bookstore. But I was so intrigued, I decided to buy it, since Phaidon is one of my favorite publishing companies.
This story is so charming, I'm already looking for futher volumes! Goscinny's writing is full of wit and the directness that children really do have. Reading the first chapter, "A Photograph To Treasure" took me right back to my own childhood, and the antics of Picture Day. I think I even had the same teacher Nicholas did!
The late Rene Goscinny obviously had a special gift. We so often loose our childlike imaginations and candor when we become grown-ups, but not he. Like so many others around the world, I am an admirer of Sempe's work from magazines like the New Yorker, and his illustrations here strike just the right tone for this wonderful story.
Don't worry if you don't have children, or nieces or nephews. This book is for anyone and everyone. It's gentle charm will touch your heart and remind you of the sweeter, simpler times in life.