Bébé arrive !

by Eiko Kadono, Koshiro Hata (Illustrations)

Une grossesse, c’est long... Surtout pour Tom, l’aîné, qui a hâte de connaître son petit frère ! Alors il observe le ventre de sa maman, qui s’arrondit de plus en plus. Il essaie de communiquer avec ce tout petit bébé qui n’est pas encore né. Il enfile même ses vêtements beaucoup trop petits pour lui ! Et surtout, Tom s’imagine tous les jeux auxquels ils pourront s’amuser, ensemble, une fois qu’il sera là.

Auteur à la bibliographie d’une grande richesse, Eiko Kadono retranscrit dans cet ouvrage les sentiments complexes que peut ressentir un bambin avant l’arrivée d’un bébé. Impatience, jalousie, fierté, anxiété... Tout un ensemble d’émotions contradictoires décrites avec justesse, dans une écriture aussi spontanée que savent l’être les enfants.

32 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Eiko Kadono (角野栄子) is a Japanese author of children's literature, picture books, non-fiction and essays in Shōwa and Heisei period Japan. Kadono was born in Tokyo, and attended the Nihon Fukushi University in Aichi prefecture, followed by a degree in English literature from Waseda University. After graduation in 1960 at the age of 25, she emigrated to Brazil, where she spent two years. She wrote a nonfiction story called Brazil and My Friend Luizinho based on her experience at that time, about a Brazilian boy who loves dancing samba. This was her maiden work, but it was not published until 1970. Most of her works are books for children. Her first successful children's book published Ôdorabô Bula Bula shi [The Robber Bla-Bla] was published in 1981. In 1985, she published the children's novel Majo no Takkyūbin, which was later adapted into the Hayao Miyazaki animated film with the same title. Both the novel and the film are known by the English title Kiki's Delivery Service. The book was awarded the Noma Children’s Literature Award, and she followed on this success with four sequels in the same series. She is the 2018 recipient of the Hans Christian Andersen Award.