Minou Drouet, a French child poet

This is the cover of 'First Poems' by MINOU DROUET. My dog helped to prop up the book as I was taking a photo in the potting shed...

The blurb says
'Minou Drouet was eight years old when most of this book was written. In France, her poems created a literary sensation, they now appear for the first time in English Translation.'

The book was published in 1956. The poems were apparently written in 1955. There was an uproar of doubt she had actually written the poems herself. Opinion seemed to be divided half and half whether the child Minou had written the poems or whether her mother had written them for her.

First of all two poems below I have chosen at random from the book. They have the French on the first of the double page, and the English translation on the second of each double page. So you will have to look at four Flickr photos to read the whole of the first poem and then three Flickr photos to read the whole of the second poem. The only poems of hers I could find the words of online were incomplete versions of the poems, so I ended up photographing the pages and posting on Flickr which was the only way I could think of doing this from the device I am on.


'I only had one friend' by Minou Drouet
Pages 10-11 here

Pages 12-13 here

Pages 14-15 here

Pages 16-17 here


'Tree that I Love' by Minou Drouet
Pages 2-3 here

Pages 4-5 here

Pages 6-7 here


Here are some links which tell you of Minou Drouet and what became of her.

This is a very short 'dry' history of her life from Wiki here

A very interesting account of her colourful life here here

Another very interesting account of her life here here

Go down one blog entry to 5-18-2005 here and there is an interesting extract from a book written about Minou Drouet.

Here is an except from Pathe News on You Tube about Minou Drouet here It is 3 minutes long. It is worth watching.

Minou seems to have lived an interesting life as she grew up, culminating in her being somewhat of a recluse in her later years.