Le Petit Nicolas L’intégrale

Bit of an awkward one to review in English given that this is a profoundly French book but Le Petit Nicolas has been a big part of my childhood, and with the recent release of a two book complete edition, I couldn’t resist revisiting it. This review is currently only covering the first entry, however I heavily doubt my opinion will significantly change once I get to reading the second book, so I’ll only update this review accordingly then instead of splitting it into two reviews (also I don’t think I’d have an awful lot more to say anyway).

Even now, there’s actually not that much for me to say, each chapter is a self contained story and usually only takes 5min to read as the pages are also interspersed with Sempé’s drawings. The writing style perfectly encapsulates the way a child thinks and adds to the charm of it, especially when adding in references to things that nowadays feel very dated (such as sending a letter to book a hotel or owning a TV being such an incredible thing that it deserves its own chapter), add in an extra personal layer of nostalgia and it makes for a great comfort read bringing me straight back into childhood.

Incredibly despite there being several hundred chapters and individual stories, most of them I remembered fairly clearly and it felt like I was re-reading something I had read just last year. One aspect that I had forgotten or that I had maybe not noticed when reading as a child however was really how short the chapters are. Having to only turn 2 pages before moving on to the next chapter started off fun but it also got a bit old with time. For one, some stories’ resolution felt rushed, it’s never a big issue because this a story of children acting like children, they don’t hold grudges, they move on easily and consequences are unknown to them. However, this was still sometimes frustrating as I sometimes saw the potential for even just one or two extra pages to a story before moving on, but instead Goscinny chose to stick to the same formula and structure for each and every chapter.

An additional side effect of this is that I wasn’t able to read this book for very long periods at a time despite its coziness. Having to mentally switch to a different story and different set up every 5min got a bit annoying and I quickly felt like stopping just because I had technically read 5 chapters when in a regular book I would usually get around to reading 3 to 4 chapters maximum at a time with an average chapter being 15-20min. I think fundamentally these are stories that are meant to be read to a child in the evening in a “quick 5min story before bed” style rather than binge read like I did but that didn’t take anything away from the reading experience nor the trip down memory lane it was.