I heard about this book from the ladies at Biblioguides long before I found it last year at a used bookshop for only $5.00. It turned out to be bargain, despite the broken binding in the back of the book, which I fixed with book tape. Anyway, the story itself is well worth the $5.00.

Six French children were sitting on the ground in the little garden back of the old church of St. Julien le Pauvre, in Paris. It was February, at four thirty in the afternoon, just after school. There was a light touch of spring in the air. Zezette, who was only five, had kicked off her wooden shoes.

It’s appropriate that the story begins in the garden of “St. Julien le Pauvre” because these children are indeed poor. And it’s appropriate that there is a “light touch of spring in the air” because there is indeed springtime hope and joy to be found in the midst of their poverty. Charles, the main character in the story, is ten years old and is Zezette’s older brother. Their mother works in a factory all day, and their father died immediately after the war. The children have a discussion in the beginning of the book of how it was BEFORE, but some of them can’t even remember a BEFORE and doubt that it ever existed. This is post-World War 2 Paris, and things are difficult—no fuel, little food, no money–but hopeful. After all, it’s almost Lent, and some of the children remember having crepes (pancakes) on the Tuesday before Lent—BEFORE.

The story goes on to illustrate the friendship between the French and their American liberators and the impact of a simple gesture of kindness. In fact, respect and kindness characterize the relationships throughout the book. (There are some Black Americans mentioned as minor characters, and they are called “Negro”, which would have been the correct and respectful term for the time.) This story would be great to read aloud on Pancake Tuesday or Mardi Gras or really anytime during the Lenten season. It would also be a fitting end to study of World War 2, with hope for the future after all the horrors of that war.

Claire Huchet Bishop grew up in Le Havre, France. She became a librarian and a storyteller, first in France, and then at the New York Public Library after she married an American and moved to the U.S. Her books, mostly set in France, paint a lovely picture of the French people and of French culture, especially among the children of post-war France.