While the stories are very funny, there are also some very touching scenes. Nicolas also shows himself to be very trusting of what his parents tell him he talks about a present his father received from his mother, a green-and-red tie which he never wears because he doesn’t want to get it dirty… For example, when, after a hellish day chasing around after a class of screaming kids at the art gallery, Nicolas’ teacher says that she never wants to see another painting in her life, our young hero understands why she is so unhappy she obviously doesn’t like art and never wanted to go to the gallery in the first place. Most of the humour comes from Nicolas’ attempts to interpret the language, both verbal and non-verbal, of adults, something he usually manages to get ever-so-slightly (but always amusingly) wrong. The seventeen short stories, supplemented by black and white sketches of major scenes, only take up about 120 pages (it is a kid’s book, after all!), but Goscinny, who was also involved in the creation of another French icon, Asterix, manages to pack a wide variety of stories and emotions into such a small space. Just as in ‘What Maisie Knew’, the reader sees events through the eyes of the title character, but in this book, the child’s lack of understanding of what adults say and think is substantially more light-hearted. ‘Les Récrés du Petit Nicolas’ is a French book about a young boy and the adventures he has at school with his friends.

After the recent traumatic tales of the darker side of childhood, I thought it would be nice to finish off a trilogy of kid-lit (my copyright, if there’s any money in it) with a short book concentrating on the sunnier side of being young.

Le petit nicolas rene goscinny