Review of Gruffalo book – My eldest daughter was given the Gruffalo as a gift for her 1st birthday, and she has not put it down since. We all love this book as a family. It gets read over and over again, and none of us ever tire of reading it. I cannot recommend the Gruffalo enough!
However I decided to buy the French version for my youngest daughter. I was so impatient and excited to get it! I thought we could enjoy the story together, and be learning French at the same time.
I love the pace of Julia Donaldson’s writing, her books are so well written. With the rhymes, descriptions and very clever use of wording. Any age child and adult alike are enchanted by the stories.
The morning it arrived, we all impatiently opened the parcel, and I sat down with my Daughter to read it.
I was so disappointed, the French translation was terrible, there was no clever use of adjectives and words. The translation for “Come and have tea in my tree top house.” was “Viens je t’invite a prendre le the dans mon nid!”.
The book no longer rhymed!
All in all I love this book in English, and I am sure we will get many more years of fun from it, but I cannot recommend this in French.
Le Gruffalo – French
The Gruffalo – English
We have since bought the Gruffalo movie on DVD in English which is excellent. I highly recommend, even my one year old is glued to the television when it is on. The BBC animation is excellently done.
