Bilingual Bedtime.
Grimm · Perrault · Andersen · Twenty-Six Fairy Tales in French and English
Twenty-six classic fairy tales told twice on every spread: beautiful public-domain French on the left page, clear modern English on the right, with a small gloss under every word so a family can read the same story aloud in both languages.
432 pages · Paperback, Kindle & hardcover · Ages 4 to 8
the opening of “Le Petit Chaperon rouge” (Little Red Riding Hood)
Twenty-six tales, in order.
Grimm, Perrault and Andersen in one big storybook, with the shorter treasures placed so there is always a one-more-story ending to hand.
Open the book anywhere and you find the same moment of a fairy tale twice. The left page carries authentic French: Perrault's own words for his tales, and the classic nineteenth-century translations for Grimm and Andersen. The right page carries a clear modern English telling of that very same passage. The two pages move paragraph by paragraph in step, with small matching numbers, so you can read one aloud, cross the spread, and find exactly the same moment in the other language.
Beneath every word sits a tiny helper. On the French page each French word carries a small English gloss; on the English page each English word carries a small French gloss. Wherever the two texts share a word, the gloss deliberately reuses the vocabulary from the facing page, so both pages teach one set of words rather than two.
The tales are told kindly for bedtime. They keep their magic and their mischief, but the very grimmest moments are softly rounded off. Every tale opens with its own watercolour frontispiece and closes with a full-page painting, more than fifty in all, created for this edition.
- 01Les Lutins et le CordonnierThe Elves and the Shoemaker
- 02Le Petit Chaperon rougeLittle Red Riding Hood
- 03La Douce BouillieSweet Porridge
- 04Le Chat bottéPuss in Boots
- 05Les Ducats tombés du cielThe Star Money
- 06La Dame HolleMother Holle
- 07Les Trois FrèresThe Three Brothers
- 08La Princesse sur un poisThe Princess and the Pea
- 09Hansel et GretelHansel and Gretel
- 10Le Renard et les OiesThe Fox and the Geese
- 11La Reine des abeillesThe Queen Bee
- 12Les FéesThe Fairies
…and fourteen more, among them Cendrillon, La Belle au bois dormant, Les Musiciens de Brême, Les Habits neufs du Grand-Duc and Blancheneige et Rougerose.
Why this edition.
The same moment, on both pages
French left, English right, matched paragraph by paragraph with small numbers. Read a line aloud, cross the spread, and hear the same line again. Children love hearing the story twice, and that repetition is how a language settles in.
One vocabulary, taught twice
Where the two texts share a word, the glosses reuse the same vocabulary on both sides. The French words a child meets on the left are the very words printed under the English on the right.
Gentle enough for bedtime
The stories keep their magic and their mischief, but the very grimmest moments have been softly rounded off. The wicked are still punished. Nobody has nightmares.
Painted for this edition
More than fifty original watercolours: every tale opens with its own frontispiece and closes with a full-page painting and a bilingual The End page. The French is set in its own typeface, so a child can see at a glance which world each page belongs to.
the opening paragraph of “Le Petit Chaperon rouge”, as it appears on the French page
The details.
- Series
- Bilingual Bedtime
- Language pair
- French and English, on facing pages
- Format
- Paperback, Kindle & hardcover
- Print length
- 432 pages
- Trim size
- 8 × 10 in (paperback)
- Source text
- 19th-century public-domain French, lightly modernised
- Illustrations
- 50+ original watercolours
- Kindle edition
- Reflowable: the French tales, then the English, glosses as ruby text
- Level
- Ages 4 to 8
- Published
- July 2026
- ASIN
- B0H8QCHPZ8
More in French.
Every edition is glossed by hand, word by word, and printed on demand by Amazon.
Read the same fairy tale twice at bedtime, once in French, once in English.
Buy paperback