Paul Berna: CoD

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seeing as i wrecked today as a working day by trying to finish THE KNIGHTS OF KING MIDAS last night after i'd gone to bed (shut-eye time = 4.45 oops), this is the thread to discuss the great french kidlit author

search: A Hundred Million Francs obv

KoKM has a great climax set in a 50s versh of WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE? The questions the 12-yr-old kid gets asked are LUDICROUSLY IMPOSSIBLE!!! "How much blood does the heart pump in 20 hours?" "How long is the Wirsung Canal?"

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 23 November 2002 15:31 (twenty-two years ago)

So is it just like Salinger then? Or The Royal Tenenbaums? (I've never come across Berna at all.)

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 23 November 2002 15:39 (twenty-two years ago)

both fairly unlike either (FRANCS is a bit like the ealing film HUE AND CRY: both involve a gang of kids, about 12-strong, aged 6-12, in a relatively poor community, tho KoKM is more mixed, classwise)

berna's real name (i just found out by the magic of google) was JEAN SABRAN, and he used dozens of pseudonyms (inc. "bernard deleuze"!!)

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 23 November 2002 15:43 (twenty-two years ago)

If he used dozens of pseudonyms, can you be sure he isn't also J.D. Salinger and Wes Anderson? (I think I'm winning this argument, don't you?)

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 23 November 2002 15:54 (twenty-two years ago)

he may well have been both, and richard scarry too, but even so neither of those books resemble neither salinger nor tenebaums

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 23 November 2002 16:05 (twenty-two years ago)

"A cloud of acrid smoke hung about the end workshop. The partition was holding — but only just. The five crooks were swinging their battering ram for the final blow. With a crash, one half of the door fell in and brought down with it the barricade of boxes.

"'Hey!' called Marion.

"The astonished men turned, and their hands hung useless and their jaws dropped to see the girl and her 60 silent, straining hounds standing behind them. The dogs were waiting as though they were held back only by some invisible leash.

"'Go on!' cried Marion in a shrill voice. 'Catch 'em! Pull 'em down! Rotten swine who pinch kids' toys in the rue des Petits-Pauvres!'

"With a joyful bound the dogs fell to work."

― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 24 November 2002 22:31 (twenty-two years ago)

am i rilly the only person in this beeyotch who's heard of/read paul berna?

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 25 November 2002 12:59 (twenty-two years ago)

Apparently yes. But now you've offered up a new candidate for the book club. :-)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 25 November 2002 15:43 (twenty-two years ago)

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