The Books

Henri’s Walk to Paris

by Leonore Klein
Illustrated by Saul Bass

One Potato Review

The boy in Klein’s story lives in a tiny French village called Reboul – “Five trees. One squirrel. A small church.” – and reads and fantasizes about Paris, where there are allegedly thousands of all of those things, and buses, and boulevards, even a zoo. Bass’s picture of cathedrals heaping and draping all over one another is especially stirring for anyone who has ever walked beside the Seine, yet it’s his quiet distillations of life in the boondocks which you are likely remember: Soup in a pot. Flowers in a window. One little white house standing resolutely before a towering, spiraling forest. Three friends – André, Jacques, Michel – just hanging around, like always, as eager to listen to your improbable stories as welcome you home when you return.

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