Easy French and German books

Callaina

Feles Curiosissima

  • Civis Illustris

  • Patrona

Location:
Canada
One of my New Year's Resolutions is to gain back my reading ability in French and German (languages which I'm supposed to have mastery of, at least in theory, as part of my grad school requirements, and which I feel rather guilty about neglecting). I'm looking for suggestions for easy(-ish) and enjoyable books in these languages.

A few requirements:

- A reading level around age 10-12 would probably be about right. (No picture books, please.)
- It's probably best to begin with prose, so no poetry, please (and I have a pretty good idea about French and German poets in any case, having accompanied so many Lieder/art songs back in the day).
- I'd probably enjoy fiction more, but could try nonfiction as well, if it is the sort of thing that one has to read in the original language to get the flavour/style of it (like, say, Cicero or Livy in Latin).
- One (justly) oft-recommended work in French is Le Petit Prince -- however, I already read large chunks of this, back in high school. (Ditto for Michael Ende's beautiful Die unendliche Geschichte.)

Ok, fire away! Any and all suggestions welcome. :)
 
I'm new here, so hello everyone! Es gefelt mir das sie woellen diese studieren!!!! Die Feuer Von Troie is eine gute text, und einfach. Viellecht diese helfen koennen. I'm glad you're getting back into German and French, I studied German for 3.5 years in high school and loved it, and a good deal of the more modern commentaries I've seen on Classical and Byzantine writers are entirely in German, so I'm sure it would be helpful there if you had the inclination (or if you're just weird and into that kinda thing like me :))
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
I'm trying to think about books I might have read and liked when I was 10-12 but can't think of much.

Would comics do, Callaina?
 
E

Etaoin Shrdlu

Guest

Erich Kästner wrote Emil und die Detektive, which you may well have read in English, as I did. I can't remember anything about it, but I liked it at the time, and I imagine it's fairly easy in German. You might then graduate, as it were, to Fabian, not a children's novel, but not difficult to read, as I remember. (It contains a line that I should probably have put on my overused quotes thread – Ich möchte meinem Brechreiz nicht zuviel zumuten – but then I don't really overuse it any more, as I'm not in a German-speaking country and it doesn't really work in translation.
 

Callaina

Feles Curiosissima

  • Civis Illustris

  • Patrona

Location:
Canada
They're mildly amusing, but just not my style. I find the presentation of both text and images to be distracting (I prefer to imagine the characters, setting, etc. in my own mind).
 

Lysandra

Canis

  • Civis Illustris

  • Patrona

Not even Tintin? :eek: I'm not a huge fan of comics either, but Tintin is different. You really must read Land of Black Gold (Tintin au pays de l'or noir) -- it's my personal favourite!
 

Adrian

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

Callaina,

for you and all other interested, here is a link to side-by-side english → multilingual editions of Jules Verne, Kafka, Lewis Carroll, Arthur Conan Doyle
http://bilinguis.com/

Hope to have been of some assistance . Wish you a pleasant read.
 

SpeedPocok5

Active Member

One of my New Year's Resolutions is to gain back my reading ability in French and German (languages which I'm supposed to have mastery of, at least in theory, as part of my grad school requirements, and which I feel rather guilty about neglecting). I'm looking for suggestions for easy(-ish) and enjoyable books in these languages.

A few requirements:

- A reading level around age 10-12 would probably be about right. (No picture books, please.)
- It's probably best to begin with prose, so no poetry, please (and I have a pretty good idea about French and German poets in any case, having accompanied so many Lieder/art songs back in the day).
- I'd probably enjoy fiction more, but could try nonfiction as well, if it is the sort of thing that one has to read in the original language to get the flavour/style of it (like, say, Cicero or Livy in Latin).
- One (justly) oft-recommended work in French is Le Petit Prince -- however, I already read large chunks of this, back in high school. (Ditto for Michael Ende's beautiful Die unendliche Geschichte.)

Ok, fire away! Any and all suggestions welcome. :)
in french i'm reading:
Leon by Mons Kallentoft and Markus Lutteman


http://www.kallentoft.com/pages.aspx?r_id=192396

if you want you can try.
 

Adrian

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

I started refreshing my french language ; at the moment, I am working with : R. de Roussy de Sales, Easy French Reader.
 
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