I am actively trying to teach my children my second language, French. And if you are like me and don’t have the budget (or time) for a French-speaking au pair or summer holidays in France, let me share my secret weapon: French read-alouds. It sounds deceptively simple, but it takes planning and, most importantly, prioritising. Because it won’t always be easy. Kids are humans too – they don’t like things unnecessarily difficult. And trying to listen to a favourite story in a second or third language is not easy. In this post I’m breaking down how I use story books in French to boost my kids’ French input and overall French skills.
*For your convenience, I hyperlinked the books mentioned in this post to Amazon. Just know that as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.*
Why read aloud in French?
Our family is quite passionate about languages, but I knew I didn’t want my kids to just dabble in foreign languages during school. I wanted them to actually LEARN another language to the point of feeling bilingual. I was aiming for a solid skill to be developed, not just general knowledge and awareness. Naturally, when I was pregnant with my first, I started doing a lot of reading on the topic.
One such book was The Bilingual Edge that left me with one major takeaway: the power of reading aloud to your kids for language development. Quality input is the make-it-or-break-it factor in the ability to learn a foreign language. And according to the authors, reading aloud (as opposed to something passive like watching tv) makes it easy for kids to get that active, quality input.
Combine these studies with what we’ve learned from the likes of Sarah Mackenzie’s Read-Aloud Revival and it all clicked. This was a simple way to get our target language – French – being heard daily in our home. And it didn’t require the extreme “one parent, one language” rule which doesn’t work for our family but I know can be very effective.
French Read Alouds: Part of the Bilingual Plan
In the book Bilingual Families: A Practical Language Planning Guide, the author makes the case for why raising bilingual kids is not something that just falls into place. If you want your children to actually know a language, you have to be intentional and strategic. Adding a French textbook into the homeschool schedule is not going to cut it. Unless you’re just interested in checking the foreign language box for your homeschool. But we don’t do that around here.
French read-alouds are a strategic move on my part to increase my children’s input of French: the accent, vocabulary, sentence structure, and grammatical forms all while doing something my kids love (hearing me read to them) so I can associate positive emotions with French. I’m taking out a lot of proverbial birds here and I love it. Talk about peak efficiency.
Does it matter what kind of French books?
The main goal is to get your target language spoken daily. So in that sense, as long as you are reading aloud in French, you’re working towards that goal. However. The more strategic you are with your read-aloud choices, the faster your children will increase their skills.
1. Read books your child already knows
I deliberately hunt for French editions of books my kids already know and have on their shelves in English. It takes a lot of guess work out of listening for them and lightens the mental load. They can enjoy the pictures and start making associations between the new words they’re hearing and what they’re seeing without constantly feeling lost because they don’t know what’s going on. Which leads me to my next point…
2. Use highly visual books
Picture books are critical. When you’re trying to build vocabulary, the more pictures, the better. Point as you read. I have board books for little kids, Dr Seuss, even comics like Tin-Tin. Look for graphic novels. Anything with a high illustration to text ratio to help your kids with visual clues as they hear the story.
3. Read the same book repeatedly
Kids naturally like hearing their favourite stories over and over. Familiarity doesn’t actually breed contempt – the more familiar a story (or song, or movie), the more kids are drawn to it. It works the same way with French read-alouds. My kindergarten-age son loves Bonsoir Lune (Goodnight Moon) on repeat. Because now, when I read a line in French, he can point to the objects in the room. He actually enjoys doing this because he knows the words.
How we fit French read-alouds into our Kindergarten
For my kindergartener, reading aloud is already part of the routine. We read Bible stories, science books, and include French story books. We aim to do this while the toddler is napping because there are fewer interruptions. But it happens every day. It’s also very short. We’re talking a few minutes, two or maybe three books. But his 4-year-old attention span is not that long. And that’s ok. Daily consistency is the most important thing. Even if it’s just one little board book.
That being said, I do build on this vocabulary. Once I know my son is familiar with (not necessarily “knows”) words like la lune is moon, un chat is a cat, etc, I try to swap out those words for good and use the French instead of the English throughout the day. So the read-aloud is the introduction and then together we practice and use those expressions and words in our daily life.
How we fit French read-alouds into Elementary
If you’re doing classical homeschool, you already have an intense, language-focused schedule for your elementary student. Yes, sometimes I’ll invite my 4th-grader over when I’m reading aloud to her little brother in French. But that doesn’t always work. Remember, I’m working around a toddler’s nap schedule when doing school with my kindergartener. Instead, I intentionally include French books into our nightly read-aloud time. And these will be slightly more challenging than La Chenille qui fait des trous (The Very Hungry Caterpillar). Night time is when we’ll go for the longer Dr Seuss books or even a chapter or two from Mercy Watson. But we follow all of the rules above: familiar stories, as many pictures as possible, and lots of repetition.
And just like with my kindergartener, I use this language with my daughter on a daily basis. The words that are familiar from our read-alouds are the ones I use more and more around the house. Not just the words, but whole expressions. I normally use a lot of French in our home, but the words and expressions I know that my daughter should be familiar with are the ones that I don’t translate right away. If she asks What does that mean in English? I’ll come back with something along the lines of: Think about it a second. You just heard this in Mercy Watson last night.
Same of Our Favourite Beginner-friendly French books
The French books on repeat in our home these days are:
- Bonsoir Lune (Goodnight Moon)
- La Chenille qui fait des trous (The Very Hungry Caterpillar)
- L’histoire de Babar
- Le Chat au Chapeau (The Cat in the Hat)
- Les œufs verts au jambon (Green Eggs and Ham)
- Mercy Watson à la rescousse (Mercy Watson to the Rescue)
- Mercy Watson en balade (Mercy Watson Goes for a Ride)
Tips for Getting Ahold of French Books
In the year 2026, it is incredibly easier to get access to French books than it was when I was a student. However, even today, where we live, there are no French books (let alone for kids) in our bookstores and very, very few in our local library. So here are a few tips if you have no idea where to start.
- Free – $ Try your library’s online catalogue and don’t forget Inter-Library Loans (you might have to pay a few dollars depending on your library system).
- $-$$ Amazon – but beware the publisher. Google the publisher to make sure it’s a legit French or English publishing house instead of a 3rd party seller offering Google-translated print-on-demand books. It happens…
- $$$ British bookstores that ship internationally like Waterstones
- $$$ French or Belgian bookstores like FNAC
- $-$$ Offer to pay friends or family headed to Europe (or an international city like NYC, Washington DC, etc) to pick up a children’s book or two for you.
If you know of any other retailers that are legit and have good prices, please comment below. I’m always hunting for books!
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