Perrault and Daudet in the original French
Five fairy tales that Charles Perrault published in Paris in 1697, and three stories by Alphonse Daudet — two from the «Lettres de mon moulin» of 1869 and one from the «Contes du lundi» of 1873 — in the French they were written in, with every word glossed where it stands and an English line under every sentence, out of your eyeline until you ask for it. 12,660 words across 687 sentences.
Open the French room → Tap any word for its dictionary form and meaning; tap a sentence for the English. «Le petit Chaperon rouge» is free, entire, and asks for no account, and the opening scene of «Les Fées» comes free after it. The rest of the shelf is part of the library — €5 a month or €39 a year, and the one subscription opens the French tales and the Spanish, German and Russian shelves alike.
The eight, shortest first
| Tale | In English | By | Words | Sentences |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Le petit Chaperon rouge free | Little Red Riding Hood | Perrault, 1697 | 683 | 36 |
| Les Fées first scene free | The Fairies | Perrault, 1697 | 860 | 41 |
| Le maître Chat ou le Chat botté library | The Master Cat, or Puss in Boots | Perrault, 1697 | 1586 | 49 |
| Le curé de Cucugnan library | The Priest of Cucugnan | Daudet, 1869 | 1705 | 156 |
| La Dernière Classe library | The Last Lesson | Daudet, 1873 | 1755 | 98 |
| La Barbe-Bleue library | Bluebeard | Perrault, 1697 | 1804 | 69 |
| La chèvre de monsieur Seguin library | Monsieur Seguin’s Goat | Daudet, 1869 | 2059 | 149 |
| Cendrillon library | Cinderella | Perrault, 1697 | 2208 | 89 |
Shortest first, because that is a fair way to meet them: «Le petit Chaperon rouge» is 683 words and reads in a sitting, and «Cendrillon» is 2208. What each one asks of a reader — dictionary words, how many appear only once, words per sentence — is counted at Perrault and Daudet, counted.
Two authors, and what that means for a reader
Perrault's five are fairy tales from the oral tradition: kings, stepmothers, fairies, a wolf and a clever cat, and a vocabulary that comes back tale after tale. Daudet's three are nineteenth-century stories — a village priest and his flock, a goat who leaves her master for the mountain, a schoolroom in Alsace on the last day French is taught there — and each brings a world of its own. Counted on the texts: 426 dictionary words appear in both halves of the shelf, 487 only in Perrault and 697 only in Daudet. That is why the room reads Perrault first, and why the reading order prices every step in new words rather than in length.
The printings
Every text here is modern French. Perrault is set from the Casterman printing of 1902, Daudet from Charpentier (1895) and Lemerre (1880), and nothing here has been simplified, retold or invented. What the tales do carry is the narrative past a textbook teaches late — the passé simple of «fut», «entra», «entrèrent» — which the room glosses back to its infinitive wherever it stands.
What is on each tale's page
Its length and its English title; how many minutes it takes at a learner's pace; how many dictionary words it uses and how many appear exactly once; its chapters as the room reads them; and where it stands on the shelf. «Le petit Chaperon rouge» carries the whole tale, French against English, sentence by sentence — and a page of its own for every sentence in it. «Les Fées» carries its free opening scene the same way.
Questions people ask before they start
How many French words do you need to read a book? · What level are Perrault's fairy tales in French? · Can you learn French just by reading? — each answered with this shelf's own numbers rather than a round figure.
The other three rooms
This is one of four rooms in the same house, built on the same reader. The others hold the Russian classics — Chekhov, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, with seven of them free — eight German tales from Grimm and Hebel, and Quiroga's «Cuentos de la selva».