Timothée de Fombelle

First line: J'ai un secret.

Rosalie is a precocious five and a half year old girl who lives with her mother in a French village, her father away fighting in World War I. When her mother begins working in a munitions factory, she makes a deal with the teacher of eight year old boys to let Rosalie sit in the back of the classroom and draw. Captaine Rosalie wiles away the hours by pretending to be a spy on a secret mission vital to the war effort.

In the evenings, her mother reads letters from show more her father, but Rosalie is suspicious that her mother is fabricating some of the stories she tells about going fishing when he returns and eating delicious food. One day she sneaks back to the empty house to read the letters for herself. Although she can't read all the words, some jump out at her, and they are not words that her mother has read to her:

Je n'ai pas plus assez de souffle pour suivre l'écriture escarpée de mon père, mais je prends les petits mots du papier, ceux qui me sautent au visage dès que je me penche.

Le mot rats, le mot sang, le mot peur.

This poignant story of a child's life on the homefront is particularly sweet because Rosalie is such an intelligent, creative, and brave little girl. Heavily illustrated by gorgeous illustrations by Isabelle Arsenault, the story was easy enough for me to follow, yet it is not a children's book per se. Instead it is a story told from the perspective of a child, but with complex overtones. I loved it. show less

Five-year-old Rosalie waits for her father's return from the battlefields of World War I in this spare and immensely powerful children's novella from French author Timothée de Fombelle. Allowed to sit at the back of a classroom of older pupils, while her mother works in the nearby munitions factory, Rosalie is engaged in a secret mission, all of her efforts aimed at learning to read, so that she might experience her father's letters firsthand. When her mother receives a mysterious blue show more envelope whose contents she refuses to share, Captain Rosalie knows she must do something, and her actions lead to more that one revelation...

Originally published in France as Capitaine Rosalie, this brief sixty-page book - part novella, part picture-book - manages to pack quite an emotional punch, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that it is so understated. The child's reaction to war here - namely, casting herself as a "combatant," one with an important and secret mission - reminded me of Ahmad Akbarpour's Good Night, Commander, an Iranian picture-book in which the boy narrator struggles to come to terms with his family's experiences in the Iran-Iraq War. The artwork in Captain Rosalie, done by the marvelous French-Canadian illustrator Isabelle Arsenault, is lovely, capturing Rosalie's experiences so beautifully and so expressively. Although short, this is not a book I would recommend for very young children, given that it addresses the death of Rosalie's father in such a straightforward way. But for upper middle-grade readers it might make a good introduction to the topic of war in general, or World War I specifically. show less

Timothée de Fombelle’s tale for older children is an unusual one. Neither a picture book nor a novel, Captain Rosalie tells the story of a little, flame-haired girl in the France of 1917. Every morning, Rosalie is dropped off at the little village school that is presided over by a one-armed school master who has been sent home from the front. He has kindly agreed to allow the little girl to sit at the back of a class of older students while her mother works at the arms factory. show more Rosalie’s father is away. He is fighting in the war.

Rosalie appears to spend her days drawing in a notebook while the lessons are taught. Really, though, she is fighting her own war, preparing for an important mission, which she believes will earn her a medal. It takes some time for readers to discover what this mission really is, but they eventually understand the clues that de Fombelle and Isabelle Arsenault (his Canadian artist-illustrator) have dropped along the way.

Every evening on her way home from the factory, Rosalie’s mother picks the girl up from school. Often she carries new letters from her husband. Sometimes she is tearful, and this is (strangely) when Rosalie loves her best: “when courage deserts her and her eyes are red.” Later her mother reads the letters aloud, and Rosalie becomes angry. She is impatient with what her father says he will do—swim, fish, and eat walnuts and trout with Rosalie—if he comes home in the spring.

Rosalie particularly cannot abide the parts of the letters in which her father exhorts that she behave herself. He apparently writes: “the children keep us going by lending their mothers support and being good.” “I couldn’t care less about being good,” Rosalie thinks. “I don’t lend my mother to anyone. I don’t want to hear any talk of fish leaping in streams. I don’t believe in stories of walnuts and mills.” The only thing that seems to be true to Rosalie is a drawing she sees on the back of one of the letters: “A forest in the distance and the land in the foreground all churned up, with soldiers hiding in holes.”

Rosalie’s mission—her battle—is a psychological one, both intellectual and emotional. It involves cracking a code, penetrating the words and denial adults place between children and the truth.

In a 2012 interview that appears in The Walrus, a Canadian general interest magazine of culture and ideas, Isabelle Arsenault commented: “I am attracted to deeper work, not to bright, funny or commercial art. I feel I’m much more underground than mainstream.” French author and playwright Timothée de Fombelle would seem to be a kindred spirit. Together the two have created a nuanced piece of literature for older children, and, yes . . . even for adults. show less

‘’Dogs bark in the distance, out there by the farms. The dead leaves whistle their way across the school yard.’’

1917, a cold autumn day in France. WWI has darkened Europe. The Great War, the war that was supposed to end all wars. How wrong the entire world was...A little girl with fiery red hair is waiting for her teacher. She is Rosalie. Her father is among the men who sacrificed themselves to defeat the Central Powers demon. Art and Imagination are her allies as her day pass in show more silence in the company of her mother and her classmates. Her world changes when a blue envelope arrives and Rosalie has to find the courage and will to show herself as a true Captain.

‘’The rain here is made of wood and steel.’’

The consequences of war are present everywhere. In the letters from Rosalie’s father, in the teacher who lost his arms, in the women who work in the factories. In the sketches on the letters, in Rosalie’s thoughts that try to fly beyond the villages and reach the battlefields. The beautiful illustrations by Isabelle Arsenault are moving and nostalgic in black, grey, brown, white and fiery red to resemble Rosalie’s hair.

I couldn’t help it. I cried and cried while I was reading. I cried because of the immense pain that is born out of war, a threat that will never vanish. I cried for the mothers and the wives, the daughters and the sons that have lost and will go losing each time war strikes because our race is so uncivilized that cannot resolve a so-called dispute through discussion, because there will always be a dictator who’d enjoy bathing the world in blood. I cried because the truth is we have learnt nothing from the past and we still resort to the same mistakes. Because we are still in darkness.

A beautiful, powerful story by Timothée de Fombelle, translated by Sam Gordon. An ode to resilience and hope that all children should read.

‘’I am a soldier on a mission. I am spying on the enemy. I am preparing my plan. I am Captain Rosalie.’’

Many thanks to Candlewick Press and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com show less