“It’s the Revolution!” with Bertrand Puard

It’s the Revolution!, volume 1, Prisoners of the Bastille, Bertrand Puard, Casterman jeunesse, to read from 9 years old.

Novelist and screenwriter, he is one of the essentials of children’s literature. Fiction, science fiction, fictionalized biographies, ecology, fake news, everything suits him, and he’s back with a whole new series of adventures that talks about history with a capital H. It’s called It’s the Revolution!

On the cover page of this first volume, we can read this sentence:

“From the first page to the last, the Revolution has only one hero: the people.”

Jules Michelet

to franceinfo

This 1846 quote from the writer and historian Jules Michelet is not there by chance since, indeed, Bertrand Puard plunges us into the Paris of the suburbs and its craftsmen of the time.

In the Germet family, there is mother Isabelle, Camille 12 years old, her little brother Justin, and father Claude who runs the Bourdon bakery, located on the edge of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, east of the famous Bastille. Paris is no longer properly supplied and the father will be arrested during a demonstration against the King. The family then finds itself in disarray.

For her part, Camille dreams of doing medicine (at the time it was unthinkable for girls) and the pharmacist she knew well offered her to become a “delivery man”. Camille then meets the young Évariste, the son of Captain Delatour in charge of the Bastille guard, and both will find themselves in spite of themselves in the front row … of The Revolution.

“I believe that we are at a turning point in the history of our country. Dad, mum, Justin, Évariste… it’s the Revolution!”

Bertrand puard

to franceinfo

We read this first volume with relish, and it’s not only because it talks about bakery, we enjoy strolling in the different districts of Paris, near these barricades that the author describes so well. Here we are, so highly the second volume!

Bertrand puard has published forty novels including several trilogies: The Erased (Hachette) – Cognac Prize 2012, Blue White Blood (Hachette), and The archipelago (Casterman). At the same time as the last and second volume of Ctrl + Alt + Delr , he has published with the editions of Seuil Jeunesse, the continuation ofHippocampus in October 2020.

After Poisoners co-written with Romain Veilletet (June 2019) and The apples of the apocalypse, here is now the third volume of Guillaume Le Cornec’s series, Garden surveys. It’s called The Lamarck Conjuring, published by Plein vent (October 2021 – to read from 10 years old).

Find plenty of other reading ideas to offer on the website of kibookin. For all ages and for all tastes, there are no more excuses not to find something to read!