Are you looking for easy, accessible French language books to read to children? You’re in the right place.
French is a beautiful language, even though its rules, grammar, and verbs can feel a little complicated at first. It’s valuable to start learning French at an early age, and helps lay the foundation for fluency later on.
One of the best ways to learn a new language is to read books. Luckily, children love to explore through literature. And they are engaged by pictures, artwork, characters, and stories. By linking words to stories in the target language, you’ll be amazed how fast your youngsters will learn.
Books filled with history, stories, pictures, and fairy tales are a great way to stimulate your child’s love of French language. The great news is that there are a whole host of French language books out there that will keep your child hooked.
French Language Books That Your Child Will Love
Let’s take a look at some great French language books for children. These range from stories to fairytales, and educational books that have an engaging and educational edge.
Fiction French Language Books
- “Les Trois Amis” is an adorable children’s storybook written by Helme Heine. The book follows the adventures and escapades of a pig, a mouse, and a rooster. Most notably, these three friends – or trois amis – ride a bike, with the pig sitting on the bicycle seat, and the mouse and the rooster each pushing one pedal.
- “Tout a Coups!” is a brilliant children’s storybook that combines excellent illustrations with French colloquialisms. This book will keep your child captivated as they will exclaim “tout a coups!” or “suddenly” at the turn of each page. This book also comes in a dual language version that makes translation easy.
- “Harry Potter et L’ecole des Sorciers” is the French translation of the classic Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. One great way to keep children engaged during a French language lesson is to read books in French that they already love in English. They’ll delight in reading along with a story and characters they’re familiar with, while quickly expanding their French vocabulary.
Non-Fiction French Language Books
- “My first 1,000 French Words” written by Susan Martineau and Sam Hutchinson. This interesting French language book comes with illustrations that introduce your younger ones with vocabularies and words that are familiar with day to day conversation and fantastic gallery that expose the different animal names and pictures. From this book, children will learn about colors and shapes. They will learn about nutrition (fruits and vegetables), and the names of offices that are associated with education. Of course, they will learn about nature, the climate, seasons, and the names of different dresses in French.
- “The Little Red Riding Hood” written by Charles Perrault, is an exciting French European fairy tale that will be familiar to many young French language learners. This book depicts several European folk tales, including one from Italy called the False Grand Mother. It is written in a very simple style that makes it easy for children to read and understand.
- “My First French Word Book” written by Mandy Stanley is an excellent book for children to learn – not only the basic French vocabulary words – but also numbers. Its introduction lays out good suggestions where parents and guardians can read the different strategies to help their children learn French in a very effective way. The book is written in a format that encourages adult-child communication. If a parent finds a word they don’t know, they can point at the image and the book will say the meaning of the word and the pronunciation of that specific term or expression. What a marvelous book!
Find the French Books That Capture Your Child’s Imagination
French language books run the gamut from super simple to complex, picture books to educational guides. It will likely take some experimenting, but finding the books that keep your child excited is well worth the search.
Garry Fenton