Grammar Is a Sweet, Gentle Song

by Érik Orsenna, Moishe Black (Translator)

Overview

In the spirit of The Little Prince, this enchanting fantasy about the adventures of a shipwrecked brother and sister is a book for young people best appreciated by grown-ups.

At the heart of its message is an impassioned plea for the magic and power of words. Jeanne, the tough-minded ten-year-old narrator, and Thomas, fourteen, are traveling to America on an ocean liner to visit their mother when a violent storm sinks their ship and tosses them up on an island. They are unhurt, but the shock of the experience leaves them without the ability to speak. Taken into the care of Monsieur Henri, an elderly islander, Jeanne and Thomas discover that the island is unlike any place they've ever been. There is the Word Market, where Monsieur Henri visits the Poets' and Song-Writers' Corner to see if they have any rhymes for sweet and mom. At town hall, pairs of words are married by the mayor. And Jeanne sneaks off to the Vocabulary of Love Shop, where a woman whose husband has left her wants to buy "a word that will make him understand how hurt I am, a mighty word that will make him ashamed." A celebration of language in all its forms, Grammar Is a Sweet, Gentle Song will delight confirmed word-lovers and inspire the uninitiated with the pleasures of the spoken and written word.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807615317
Publisher:	Braziller, George Inc.
Publication date:	05/17/2004
Pages:	120
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Érik Orsenna, a member of the French Academy, is the author of André Le Nôtre: Gardener to the Sun King. He is a distinguished economist and served as cultural advisor to former French president François Mitterand.

Moishe Black is emeritus professor of French at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. He is the translator of Farewell, My Queen by Chantal Thomas.

Editorial Reviews

In Orsenna's witty rumination on words and grammar, 10-year-old Jeanne and her 14-year-old brother, Thomas, are shipwrecked on a strange island where words have become independent. Rendered mute, the siblings visit the Word Market, where one can buy the perfect word for any occasion. They also travel to a town full of independent words that strut around without the need for human beings to utter them. The marriages that take place between nouns and adjectives or adverbs are particularly clever: "house, still preceded by the, came out of the shop with the qualifier she liked best: haunted. Thrilled with her purchase, she kept telling her articled servant, `Haunted, imagine that, I've always simply adored ghosts, and now I'll never be alone again.' " Such word adventures help restore the siblings' power of speech. On this level, the book works admirably. The more serious subplots involving the siblings' estranged parents and a cadre of strict grammarians who kidnap Jeanne are betrayed by shallow characterization. Having raised darker and more grown-up questions, the author seems unable to provide answers as satisfying as the open-ended whimsy of his word island. Existing in the precarious middle ground between a children's tale and adult fiction, the novel delights while providing maddening hints of a stronger, more rewarding story. (May) FYI: A member of the French Academy, Orsenna is the author of Andr Le N tre: Gardener to the Sun King. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Frenchman Orsenna, an esteemed economist and former cultural counselor to the late French president, Francois Mitterand, has written an odd parable that advance publicity is comparing with Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince. Like that classic, it is a sweet story that unfolds in a fanciful setting. Narrator Jeanne is only ten when she and her older brother, Thomas, are shipwrecked on a transatlantic voyage to America-a trauma that takes away their ability to speak. They wash up on a small island, where an elderly man, Monsieur Henri, quickly comes to their aid; ultimately, he helps them rediscover language. Wordplay makes up much of the second part of the story, for on the island words have lives of their own: certain pairs, for example, are married at the town hall. While intriguing and imaginative, this French best seller is perhaps too unusual and precious for the general reader. Recommended for larger literary fiction collections.-Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., VA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Getting shipwrecked doesn't have to be so bad. Ten-year-old Jeanne and her older brother Thomas don't get along, which isn't much of a surprise. In fact, not much is a surprise as Orsenna (Love and Empire, 1991, etc.) begins here. Jeanne and Thomas seem just your average precocious and slightly pampered French children who happen to be on an ocean liner to America-until, that is, the liner sinks in a storm and the kids are swept up on a deserted shore. The first sign that something is out of the ordinary-that we're not reading just the tale of two children surviving on a lonely island-comes when Thomas and Jeanne discover pages of a dictionary washing up on the beach (there was a Scrabble tournament on the boat), still impossibly legible after floating in the sea. Jeanne is delighted and starts snatching the pages up, thinking she'd like to cover her body in them: "They would have caressed and soothed me in the unobtrusive, slightly unsettling way that words have." The island turns out hardly to be deserted. A kindly older man named Monsieur Henri swiftly appears and takes the little survivors on a tour of a place more than a little magical and quite definitely metaphoric. Here, words are free, not imprisoned by and always waiting on people. Instead, they're living tribes that occasionally have dealings with each other, sometimes even getting married to words from different tribes. All this isn't just fantasy and fun, since Orsenna has some grammar lessons to teach the young readers who are presumably his targeted audience. But in this tiny French bestseller (260,000 copies sold so far, we're told), he imparts the lessons delightfully, making examples of things like the nouns and articles(they're always together) who go shopping in stores run by adjectives, since the adjectives help the nouns and articles feel less cold and naked. A slim little surprise of delightful whimsy: Umberto Eco would definitely approve.

Kirkus Reviews