Madeline

Rachel has really taken to the Madeline books by Ludwig Bertrams. For those of you who don't remember, they're the books about a little French girl named Madeline who lives in a school with 11 other girls and gets into a lot of adventures. The stories were written in the 1930s-1950s and we have four of them in small-size versions. I end up reading at least one or two of them to Rachel every night.

Last night as I rushed around preparing dinner, I left Rachel in her carseat for a while. When I came back she was reading "Madeline's Rescue." She has even memorized some of the pages! Tonight we read it together and I paused a couple of times to wait for her to fill in the right answer. And she did!

But if you read the books, they're quite...dark. One of them is about the spoiled French ambassador's son who lives next door. His name is Pepito and he does some awful, awful things...like build mini-guillotines and use them to chop off the heads of chickens! And another book has Madeline disobeying Miss Clavel by walking too close to the river (the Seine, I'm guessing), falling in and nearly drowning before a dog rescues her. "Madeline would surely be dead/except for a dog that kept it's head," the book says soberly, and I had to wince.

Oh, well, I guess it's better than Barney.