First page of comics is on page 9 of the book.

Chapter 1: Mrs Moinot
It’s the first day of big school. We wait the teacher in front of the classroom.

That’s it, she’s here!
...
Shoot… why do I get a teacher so ugly? What’s more, she doesn’t look very kind…

The teacher tells us to get to line up in pairs.
All the others take a friend by the hand.
I’m on my own. I don’tknow anyone, because last year, in kindergarten, I was in a school in a different area.

Next to me, another pupil is alone. IHe comes over to me and takes me by the hand.
That’s it, we’re all two by two. We can enter.

When everyone is seated, the teacher introduces herself. She is called Mrs Moinot. Shee writes her name on the board. At least, I gues that it’s her name, since I can’t yet read.
Monday 14th September 1970

The teacher asks us our name and our parents’ professions. The first answer and the teacher takes notes in a big notebook.
I start to sweat in my socks. I don’t want it to be my turn. I want time to stop. And then I would run away!!!
I am all red, I’m stiflingly hot. What am I going to reply that she does, my Mother? That buzzing in my ears and my temples makes me feel ill. It is already the turn of my neighbour!
He’s called Alain…
...his mother is a nurse and his father paints lead soldiers.

That makes everyone laugh.
The teacher isn’t happy. She says that it isn’t nice to mock. She orders us to stop laughing and be silent.
I pray that she doesn’t remember where she est and she skips my turn…
But she turns towards me…

My throat is knotted.
She asks me if I have lost my tongue then what I’m called.
My jaw loosens itself a little and I say to her:
IamcalledJean
myfatherisbossofafactory
mymothersecretary
I said it that quick so without doubt no-one understood. But the teacher passes on already to the next.
I didn’t listen to the responses of the others, I am petrified. My feet swim in the juice of my shoes.

After the teacher announces that at Christmas, she will be leaving to retire and that another teacher will be coming to replace her. She is all sad when she tells us that.
That sounds a long way off, Christmas…

Chapter 2: My Father
The mothers and fathers come to collect their children at the school exit.

It is Yvette who comes to collect me.
Yvette is our nanny. She lives with us. She makes us food, makes us learn our lessons, washes us in the morning, dresses us…
...and comes to collect us from school.
In the car, there’s Paul, my little brother. He is one year younger than me, he is still in kindergarten.

Paul and me love each other, and say it to each other every day with our words between us.
In order to stop us fighting, Yvette threatens not to give us our iced chocolate milk.
It us a very effective threat because we love it when she prepares us it as a snack.

Recipe for iced chocolate milk by Yvette

In the evening, after squabbling, arguing, fighting, making up, colliding, chasing through all the rooms, we take a bath and we soup. At our house we say we soup and not we dine. It should be said that, winter and summer, the evening meal starts with a soup.
My favourite soup, it’s the one with numbers and letters.
Each evening, Yvett tries to get us to learn a little of the alphabet.

My father comes back late from work. It isn’t because of the journey, since his factory is just next to our house. It’s because of his responsibilities: he is boss.
And apparently, boss, it’s a nice job to keep you full of worries.
Worries, that sounds like eyebrows. My father, because of his worries, he always creases his eyebrows.
[well, in French “worries” (“soucis”) sounds like “eyebrows” (“sourcils”); I’m sure someone could provide a more elegant translation]

One question obsesses me. Every evening, I tell myself that I am going to ask but I never dare.

Chapter 3: Michèle
My neighbour is called Michèle Meunier…
She is two years older than me.

Her parents own a kennel. They are very strange, especially her father. He yells all the time…
...at her mother…
...or at Michèle.
Since he yells, that excites the dogs who get themselves barking. In turn, he also yells at the dogs which are then even more excited.
And so everybody yells and everybody shouts at the same time. No-one knows any more what started it. It’s truly a noise from hell..

Some nights, the dogs start howling. We say they are wolves.
According to Yvette, that meant that someone had just died. When she said that, my father shrugged his shoulders: he didn’t believe that.
My father won’t let me play round Michèle’s house. He says that their dogs are dangerous. Michèle’s parents won’t let her play round my house, I think it’s because they don’t like my father. So when we play together, we are like this…
...each on one side of the privet hedge that separates our gardens.

In fact, Michèle only plays with me when she is bored. When her friends come round, she’s not interested in me any more.
Well, apart from that, Michèle is very nice. And then, she’s my only neighbour…
Sometimes, she wants to play at hairdressers. I brush her hair and she tells me her girl stories.
But I don’t like that so much. I prefer we play at Indians.

My heart beats very hard when I say to her yes. Often, secrets, they are a bad surprise. There, it is a good one, an INCREDIBLE ONE!
Michèle pulls out of her jumper a postcard…
...she tells me that it is MY MOTHER WHO WROTE IT!!!
Michèle tells me then, looking me right in the eyes, that she wants to read it to me but that first I must promise her that I will not speak to anyone of the card.

Even my father or my brother or Yvette, they would be very pleased to know that mother wrote to me… But Michèle forbids me from telling them. I ask Michèle why it’s her that received the card. Shee tells me that it is just because my mother wants no one to know that she wrote to me.
Dear Jean. All’s well! Today, I am in Spain. It’s very hot! The ladies play castanets and the men do bullfighting. Yesterday, I ate a very good paella with crayfish. After I bathed in the sea. It was hot and very calm. I give you a hug. Mama.

Chapter 4: Alain
Some days after classes started, Alain invites me to spend a Wednesday afternoon at his house.
He lives in a large house, on a hill, a little outside the town.

Alan has a record-player. It’s great to be able to listen to his real records.
But he says that it’s very fragile and he doesn’t let me touch it.
Alan has loads of records, but he always plays the same song. It is one where men sing in chorus: “We’re the men of the marines!”

I say to Alain that his mother is super pretty. He tells me that she isn’t hir real mother because he was adopted.
He tells me that with a cheerful voice. Like he was saying “I really like chocolate biscuits”.
[“Choco BN” is a brand of biscuits]

After, we go to see his father. Basically, he paints lead soldiers.
But the most strange, it’s that he has a big black beard and that he is in a wheelchair.
All around, on the shelves, there are dozens of little lead men in uniform.
They advance carrying their guns,
firing cannons,
charging on their horses

Alain’s father tells me their names: there are infantrymen, artillary, hussars…
He even has one called Hairies!
[Apparently there were WWI soldiers called “Poilus”, which roughly translates as “hairy”]
He tells me to choose one to take one home with me.
The soldiers, it isn’t really my thing. I prefer cowboys and indians. But I don’t want to annoy Alain’s father and I take a hussar un a horse.

Alain’s mother makes us a delicious snack. There is a large jar of Nutella. I often eat it at Grandma Edith’s, but at home, it’s forbidden.
I spread it over many slices of toast.

After the snack, we return to Alain’s bedroom to listen to records, actually, a record and to play cowboys and indians with the soldiers of Napoleon.
Then Alain’s mother comes and tells me that it’s time to go home and that her husband is going to drive me.

Alain’s father gets around like a master on his wheelchair.
[something a bit more idiomatic would be better here]
And he knows how to drive very well.

Chapter 5: Yvette
Before Yvette, there had been another girl that looked after my brother and me. She was also called Yvette.
She was young, she was blond, she played guitar.

But above all, she played the martinet.
(_Martinet: strips of leather with which to beat children who aren’t well-behaved. Michèle’s father uses one to hit his dogs.)
Luckily father was against the martine.
Yvette “martinet” was sent away, and Yvette “bowl of chocolate” replaced her.

My brother and me loved her straight away.
I believe that my father too, he is fond of Yvette. Yvette is fond of him, my father, but above all she loves her fiancé that she sees in secret.
The fiancé, he is called Daniel. I encountered him by chance, one afternoon, at the bottome of the garden.

I was playing at hide-and-seek with my brother, and him too, he was attempting to hide himself behind a tree trunk.

In addition to all her qualities, Yvett is above all a great cook. She subscribes to “Kitchen Cards” and try all the recipes that she recives in the post. We eat…
...cheese soufflés,
stuffed aubergine,
Blackberry clafoutis.

My brother and I, we don’t like endives, nor broccoli, nor brussel sprouts but we eat all the same because we like Yvette so much. Yvette, we love her as if she wee our mothere.
But she isn’t our mother…
Mom, I want some noodles.
Paul, I am not your mother.
I am your nanny.
Waaaaa!! I want some nooooddelllls.

In kindergarten, last year, the teacher had us preare presents for Mother’s day.
Me, I made a necklace with some little pasta that I painted different colours, joined by a string.
I wanted to say “Happy holiday, Mama!” but I just said “Happy hooliday, Yvette!” because I know that she doesn’t like it when we call her Mama.
She said thank you and smiled but a tear ran down her cheek.

In the night, When I am dreaming, there is a witch sitting next to my bed.
She watches me, and if I move, she will kill me. Then, I don’t move even an eyelash. I try not to breath, so that she doesn’t hear me. I stay completely still.
In the morning, when I open my eyes, she’s disappeared.

Chapter 6: Louis from Funès
The thing I don’t like at school…

...it’s breaktime.
- sometimes I play marbles with my classmates – I love playing marbles with my brother, I win all the time. But I hate to play marbles with my classmates, I lose all the time.
- sometimes we play football. I love to play football. But the classmates say that I shoot very badly and they put me in goal…

...And then, it hurts to stop shots.
- Sometimes I talk with my classmates of what we saw on tv. I love tv. But, at the house, my father doesn’t want us to watch it. He says that it isn’t good for school. In any case, not watching tv, it’s not good for breaktime.

Luckily, my brother and I, we have come up with a scheme to watch tv in secret when Yvette makes dinner and when Papa has not come back from the factory.

Unfortunately, my father has a scheme to know if we just turned off the tv.

Dear Jean
I’m well. Today I am in San Francisco. Americans are very nice. They drive huge cars and chew gum. This morning, I came across an Indian while I was shoping [deliberately misspelled]. He was called White Dog and helped me push my cadi. But he left in a hurry when I came across a man with a cowboy hat. This evening I am going to go and see Buffalo Bill do his rodeo.
I give you a big hug.
Your little mother who loves you.