This year, on her 19th birthday, France lost a national treasure. Her name was Esther, and she was the protagonist and co-author of Les Cahiers d’Esther (“Esther’s Notebooks”).
Les Cahiers d’Esther is a series of nine graphic novels, written and illustrated by cartoonist Riad Sattouf and first published in 2016. The idea for the series was sparked at a dinner with friends of Sattouf, who brought along their nine year old daughter. Lively and opinionated, the young girl’s passionate stories of daily life interested Sattouf; so much so that he decided to put her world on paper.
Each week, Sattouf would have a conversation with Esther in which he learned all about her moods, whims, worries, and obsessions. Based on the meeting, he would then compose a comic strip. 52 weeks and 52 conversations later, a new Cahier was born.
Each novel chronicles a year of her life, from nine to eighteen, serving up a sharp look at the daily dramas of a bright, spirited girl growing up in the French capital. Esther is vain, materialistic and often prejudiced— yet she’s also caring, precocious, and utterly charming. The result? Stories that are funny, keenly observed, and surprisingly moving.
Les Cahiers d’Esther has become a sensation in France, selling over 2 million copies, being translated into eight languages, and even inspiring an animated series. I first encountered Esther through my boss at the Parisian company where I interned during my year abroad. He gave each intern three books (three years) and made us promise to remain friends so we could exchange them and complete the story. These novels are meant to be shared; to spark conversations across generations. But what is it about Sattouf’s portrayal of childhood that is so beguiling?
Childhood is one of literature’s most slippery subjects. Not least because, canonically, adults have almost always been the ones to write it. As such, childhood is written with tension built in. With this in mind, Sattouf’s approach is radically inclusive. In Les Cahiers D’Esther, he puts Esther in the driver’s seat; the child becomes the creator. This collaboration – between child and adult – is the life-force of the graphic novels.
Another challenge to writing about childhood is its volatility. As Roald Dahl put it:
‘The adult is the enemy of the child because of the awful process of civilising this thing that, when it is born, is an animal with no manners, no moral sense at all.’
Childhood is a space of beginnings and developments, not so much about being but becoming. This idea makes for supple metaphorical terrain. Here, you can get really Freudian, but suffice to say for now childhood (in literature and beyond) is a space moulded by adult desire.
Roald Dahl also said that the key to his success was conspiring with children against adults. In Les Cahiers D’Esther, Sattouf also takes this approach. He retaliates firstly by listening. He writes about what matters to Esther, no matter how trivial or vain, from the phone she’s obsessed with and the boy she fancies to all the ways her brother drives her crazy.
Often, what matters to Esther is in fact adulthood. She obsessively tries to appear older, whether mimicking adults in group play, humorously misusing slang from older teens, or fantasising about a boyfriend with a goatee and leather jacket. These performances of adulthood show that the fantasies run both ways. Children construct adulthood just as adults construct childhood and both are somewhat delusional.
In traditional literary depictions, Dahl’s child / ‘animal’ is often sweetly innocent – unaware and unspoilt. When literature charts the path from childhood ignorance to knowledge, the ‘awful process of civilising’ takes effect. This journey is often disciplinary, used to caution or moralise readers (who are usually children themselves).
By contrast, Esther is far from innocent. Driven by her own impulses or peer pressure, she can be disturbingly cruel. A striking example is when she laughs along while her friends physically bully a boy, failing to intervene (Histoires de mes 12 ans). Her frequent use of racist, homophobic and Islamophobic language reminds readers that childhood does not exist in a Romantic vacuum. If anything, social prejudices manifest more viciously in this universe. Unlike in traditional children’s literature, Esther isn’t a role model or a cautionary tale. Her flawed attitudes and behaviours often go unchecked, reflecting moments of injustice that are key to Sattouf’s sociological lens. His approach is not to sanitise these uncomfortable realities but to document childhood in all its raw, messy complexity.
While Sattouf makes strides in challenging literary myths of childhood, it’s naive to view Les Cahiers d’Esther as entirely unfiltered. Even if we trust that Esther’s words are largely her own, they are still mediated by the adult gaze. This is most apparent in the illustrations, where Sattouf transmutes Esther’s text into simple black-and-white drawings set against bi-chromatic backgrounds. His interpretations are often tenderly ironic. For example, when Esther raves about meeting the best-looking boy she has ever seen, the image humorously contradicts her (Histoires de mes 10 ans). Through these moments of playful tension between image and narrative, Sattouf gently teases his protagonist while giving a knowing wink to older readers.
Les Cahiers d’Esther are a pioneering feat of children’s literature because they champion children’s rights to tell their own stories. The novels do so not by erasing the adult, but instead by engaging child and adult in an open and honest dialogue. Perhaps, therefore, the key to intergenerational appeal lies in intergenerational authorship.
Of course, Esther’s identity is not known. Nor should it be. What matters is that readers trust she exists. Sattouf’s most powerful revolt was to make Esther real. Now, with the release of Esther’s final Cahier – Histoires de mes 18 ans – in June, readers can quietly grieve for the little girl they watched grow up, just as we grieve for the child within us.