Writing a good story that is educationally sound, fun, accessible, lively, and interesting enough to keep the students attention from beginning to end is a serious challenge.  There are lots of options and lots of choices.  Genre, settings, topics, characters, tone, narrative, vocabulary, grammatical progression etc…

I decided that a mystery will keep the students curious, that a road trip will take them through diverse parts of France teaching them its history and specific interests, and, most of all, that carefully selected characters will keep them involved.  So, I chose 5 high school seniors for my characters with whom any adolescent reader could identify. They actually are an amalgam of some of my former students.

Kip is the cool kid, glued to her iPod, she is sharp but easy going.

Jean-Michel is a quiet leader: thoughtful, organized, strong, but unassuming.

Ségo (his efficient sister) is calm and creative, on the preppy side.

Mehdi is the curious “computer whiz” with a big heart

Alex is an active cyclist, inquisitive, and very well informed.

 Topics were trickier to choose. The French serious involvement with ecology is one topic I couldn’t ignore, France being the 4th largest food exporter in the world (just after the U.S.) had to be hinted at.  Rather than give statistics and bore the readers, I gave voice to Oncle Max’s neighbor growing organic wine. France being the first tourist destination in the world, I had to make sure that the characters drive through many hot spots “not to miss”, highlighted by cultural notes. Websites names are added in the Activités section to encourage the readers to further their research on their own.  They will discover by themselves historic figures like Charlemagne, Alienor of Aquitaine, beloved comics characters like Tintin and Astérix, the awesome site of Lascaux caves and regions where nature runs wild and free (the Tarn). In other words, it is History light and Geography practical!

 A constant concern for me was making sure that the readers will get involved with the plot and the characters, but also develop new habits of glossing over the translated words, detecting the common French/English roots and checking the words out in their context to help them read faster and easier as the story unfolded. Humor had to keep things light and also plenty of dialogues in everyday current French to be memorized, acted in class or/and turned into videos.  I remember teaching a rather silly French Soap opera like video chockfull of idioms. I learned later that most of the French my students retained in their adulthood were these useful everyday idioms that make someone speak and sound like a native and not like a textbook. I try to be light on the silly and generous with the useful expressions they learned in that “silly” video.

 The Activités section is not a textbook.  I check the comprehension, have the kids use the freshly acquired vocabulary and review tricky points of grammar. I give special attention to cognates, the good friends and the “faux” ones.  For instance:

résumer in French =  to summarize, to sum up  //   to resume en anglais  = continuer

 Internet sites come and go, I always worry that they’ll disappear in a few month leaving the students pending . . .

I am working right now on “Bonus” units in the Activités section,  gathering for instance a bunch of words ending in ––age in English and in French, like courage, entourage, étage, fromage, etc.  The ending ––age indicates that the word is masculine and  the students will have acquired painlessly a number of useful words with their proper gender. 

One never finds me without pen and paper to note the “bonuses” that come to my mind… anywhere!

Nicole Fandel, 

Author, La Maison d’Oncle Max