The "Bibliothèque numérique francophone accessible" has a pdf + a synthetic voice version, but you have to create an account. I don't know about how prices, haven't had time to check, and I really dislike listening to artificial voices for long texts, but it might be a useful source for someone here... http://www.bnfa.fr/livre?biblionumber=3538

What's the name of the book? Have you checked out the BnF (Bibliothèque nationale) Gallica catalogue? They have a big database of old books. https://gallica.bnf.fr/accueil/en/content/accueil-en?mode=desktop

We homeschool in France. Both parents are bilingual. We mostly speak English at home, French with other people or when having lessons in French. For math: we use the French edition of the Singapore workbooks for daily drill, occasionally referring to the lessons in the corresponding (French) textbook, and discuss those problems in French. In English, we use several "living math"-style series like Life of Fred and Beast Academy and work the problems together. For reading: I teach them to read in the "easier" (more fluent) language first, which is English in our case, then about 6 months in we start a French phonics method and have daily lessons in each language. For my oldest two I used the French public school curriculum for math and language arts through a distance learning center for the first two years of elementary to make sure we were covering everything in French but found it too constraining and time-consuming. I wanted a better balance between our two languages, more time for English. Main curriculum for history and science are in English, and I add in background reading and documentaries in French. Weekly piano lessons with a local (French) teacher, daily practice with me in English so they know note names, technical terms etc. in both. My oldest two had a very hard time getting started in French because they were mostly home with me in an English bubble as babies/toddlers. Starting some local sports classes in French (dance, tumbling, judo...) helped them gain confidence and get started speaking. If they didn't understand the oral instructions, it helped a lot to be able to watch the physical demonstration of what they were supposed to do and it reinforced new vocabulary in a relatively low-stress environment. They had gone to a half a year of preschool in French with very little understanding of the language and found it incredibly stressful and traumatic... which is why we quickly switched to homeschool, to give them more time to gain fluency French and to maintain their completely native English. As wonderful as sink-or-swim total immersion in a target-language school can be for some children, I would hesitate to send any kid into this situation again without at least a basic grasp of the language, unless they were incredibly outgoing and unafraid of making mistakes and relaxed about not understanding anything at first.

Loesje22000 -- I see there is even a Latin magazine from this publisher. That is such a cool idea! Have you tested it by any chance? (Sorry to change the subject from French magazines but I see in your signature that you are doing Latin too.)

I only know about magazines sold in France so you might have better luck (and spend a lot less money!) finding Canadian-published magazines. I just found this website from Bayard Canada with several of the magazines I mention below so I'll put the link here: https://www.bayardjeunesse.ca/collections/magazines-8-14-ans The "J'aime lire MAX" for the oldest age group (9-13) might appeal to her (https://www.jaimelire.com/j-aime-lire-max-9-13-ans) but might also be hard if she's a beginner. You could try a subscription for the next age group down to start with, the 7-10 edition. There are some more teen-girl-oriented magazines that I've seen around, like Julie, but I've never looked into them. https://milan-jeunesse.com/offre-speciale-amc/magazines-8-15-ans/magazine-julie-amc.html SoCaliLover, how about Astrapi (science and history) or Wapiti or Okapi (animals) ? https://www.astrapi.com/magazine https://www.wapiti-magazine.com/magazine My favorites are the the magazines from Faton jeunesse ( https://www.faton.fr/theme/jeunesse.5.php ), which are more intellectually stimulating ? We loved Le petit Léonard (art history magazine, 7-13 years) when we got it for a few months, and Arkéo (archaeology). For slightly older kids/teens, Histoire junior (history, obviously), Virgule (literature, langage) and Cosinus (math--for high schoolers) are all solid. There is also a French edition of National Geographic.

I went to a few years of public college in the US (double major, French and English, with no previous high school diploma--I was not homeschooled exactly, it's complicated), then a year of a study-abroad program in France during which I validated the last few credits needed for my BA, and at the end I wanted to stay on for another year or two. The program was ridiculously expensive; I was paying much more than my tuition back home and much MUCH more than local tuition in France, and I had already worked so hard to master French and adapt to the French system but wasn't going to get any extra degree to show for it, so I officially enrolled in a French university and finished my studies there and still live in France. It was a few hundred euros per year for tuition, though this was 15 years ago. I don't know if it's pertinent to anyone's questions here but I found it quite easy to enter a public university in France. (The more prestigious "grandes écoles" are another story.) I had to redo a year, I mean do the last year of a "licence" program even though I already had an American BA and a year of that study-abroad program, but it was a useful transition to grad school. I was also studying literature and language, and degrees from a foreign country would not have been a problem had I moved back to the US later. I doubt I would have dared do graduate studies in France in science or medicine or law if I had not been absolutely sure of wanting to stay and work in France afterward.

To pass the time during a dull class at my (French) university long ago, I conducted a totally informal survey on this subject. I passed a questionnaire around the lecture hall for several weeks and asked my classmates to jot down all the titles of "classics" from their childhood that came to mind, the books that most influenced them or that felt like a fundamental part of their cultural identity. On this list of hundreds of books, there were only a few by French-language authors, such as L'enfant et la rivière (by Bosco I think), Les lettres de mon moulin, Le petit prince, La petite Fadette (George Sand), Le petit Nicolas, a few by the Comtesse de Ségur, and a Jules Verne or two. The rest were all works in translation from German, English or a few other languages that have been so popular for a few generations that the average French person doesn't even realize these books weren't originally in French. I just remember seeing a lot of Enid Blyton books (Famous Five--or le Club des Cinq), Alice in Wonderland, Little Women, A Little Princess, Heidi, Pippi Longstocking (Fifi Brindacier), books by Michael Ende (German author--Neverending Story, Momo, Jim Button, I mean L'histoire sans fin and Jim Bouton), Tom Sawyer, The Hobbit, White Fang (Croc blanc) or other Jack London books, Mon bel oranger (a Brazilian book, original title: Meu pé de laranja lima), TONS of Roald Dahl books, etc. I think that if I asked the same question of a lecture hall full of French students today there would also be a lot of Harry Potter, Droon, La cabane magique (Magic Treehouse)... Most of the Bibliothèque Rose books are translations from American or English series (series about magic ballet slippers, magic talking kittens, horse-themed series, and so on) and are wildly popular with pre-adolescent girls. My list is probably not going to be very helpful to you. Anyway, just trying to let you know that non-French works in translation are OK if you want to give your daughter a thorough French cultural-linguistic background. Otherwise you'll have trouble finding huge quantities of great childhood literature in French. It is a smaller publishing market than the English-language one, for example, so it makes financial sense to translate authors who are already successful in English rather than supporting new authors writing in French, and children's literature is has historically been less of a cultural priority than in German-speaking countries, for example, or in many other countries, as far as I can tell. A large portion of the picture books for smaller children in our local library's children's section are Japanese. There are many Swedish writers as well. For earlier childhood reading, not novels, it seemed that what they all remembered most were Belgian and French bandes dessinées (BD), like those mentioned in the other replies above. Lucky Luke, Boule et Bill, Astérix, Tintin, Gaston Lagaffe, Titeuf... I'm probably the only person in France to feel this way but I can't bear them for various reasons, drawing styles I find ugly, blatant sexism/racism/colonialism, crudeness, or finding them just plain boring, but my French husband grew up with them and turned out to be a lovely person anyway, with fond memories of all these BD, and they are definitely part of a typical French childhood experience if that's what you're seeking.

Another vote for RSO. I recently started Life with my twins, just turned 7, and we all love it and are looking forward to doing Earth and Space in 3rd, then hopefully Chemistry in 4th. We were very disappointed with the science component of their distance school curriculum for first grade this year, which never went much farther than "count how many baby teeth you have and write the number in the blank" or "Draw a picture of what a tree looks like in winter." I wanted something secular, systematic and progressive that they can build on each year, with lots of hands-on stuff--and all laid out for me because I am already stretched thin. ;-)

I grew up in a monolingual family in the US. Around 7 or 8 I decided to learn French--I really don't know why I chose French. I guess I wanted something different. I had never heard a word of French in my life except for learning "Frère Jacques" in preschool. My mom got me a cassette with a few children's songs and a booklet to go with it and I listened to it until the recording tape inside disintegrated. I found a set of basic vocabulary flashcards from the 1960s at a swapmeet and studied them obsessively. I read the kids' novel "The Avion my Uncle Flew" again and again. When I was in 8th grade (finally!) my school offered a year of beginning French so of course I signed up and worked very hard to absorb everything possible. I then skipped a few years of school and when I started college I signed up for French 2. I stayed with French lit as my secondary major. The Internet was just barely starting to exist but I spent extra hours in the language lab listening to the cassettes and doing the exercises. I rented all the French films they had at the video store. I laboriously read every French book the library had to offer. Madame Bovary is hard when you're a beginner, even a determined beginner with a big dictionary at hand. I dawdled after class to try to talk more with my professors and practically stalked the very few native-speaker students I could find so I could practice speaking with them. As soon as it became possible, I began watching the TF1 French evening news (with terrible sound and image quality) on the web every day. At the end of college I moved to France. First through an exchange program and soon after as a regular foreign student, I enrolled in college here and got more degrees in French literature. I now work as an editor and translator. I can read or understand lots of other languages but French and English are really the only two I consider myself to have mastered. Generally people don't know I am not a native speaker/writer. I can only imagine what it would have been like had a bilingual school been available, if I had had some foreign-language speakers in my family, if I had had access to some of the global media that we now have. Then again, perhaps a second language would not have seemed so unattainable and exotic and I would not have applied myself so much.

Maybe your long drive is behind you now but in case you're still looking, were you thinking of more kid-friendly or grownup podcasts? There are a couple of short science/kids' Q&A ones that I jotted down a few months ago but haven't tested yet: Les p'tits bateaux on France Inter and L'oreille des kids https://www.franceinter.fr/emissions/les-p-tits-bateaux http://www.rts.ch/jeunesse/l-oreille-des-kids/podcasts/ And some stories that my kids liked: http://jeunesse.short-edition.com/podcasts Here's a site with a few more suggestions: http://fr-fr.radioline.co/podcasts-radios-en-direct/podcasts/categorie-jeunesse-et-famille And in case none of these are what you're looking for, here are some adult ones (some very adult) on current events, culture, humor: http://www.topito.com/top-podcast-radio-en-mieux Let us know if you find any gems. :-)

Thanks, Loesje! I have just been reading the bilingual board and it's wonderful to find some other multilingual families to talk to at last. Homeschooling is growing fast in France (just like in Belgium, according to my Belgian acquaintances), especially here around Paris, but it's still very limited and there are not many resources out there yet. I hadn't found much specific support in the various French networks for homeschooling in more than one language, and there are a lot of issues that come up, especially now that the laws will probably be tightened by next autumn and we will have to follow the French curriculum to the letter. Hope to discuss these things with you soon!

How about Minimus? As a method for beginners, I find it better than all the many Latin manuals and workbooks I used myself over the years. There is no separate workbook but the pupil's book has written exercices to copy out at the end of each chapter. It's supposed to be geared towards kids 7-10 and they can read the lessons on their own but it can also work for older beginners, especially ones who already have a lot on their academic plates and can't commit to hours of extra work every day. Or for busy moms who want to refresh their own Latin. (I admit that I enjoy reading it myself.) There is a bunch of free enrichment material on the author's website--short comic strips in Latin and such. I found the pupil's book at a very reasonable price and one book for all the kids is enough since it's not consumable. I haven't bought the instructor's manual or audio CD yet so I don't know if they're useful or not.

I've been lurking here a bit and getting some good ideas so here I am, ready to chime in and perhaps contribute some of my own! We live in France. My kids are 6, 6 (twins, rather obviously) and 3. The elder two spent 6 months in preschool at age 3 and the experience convinced us all that it was not right for us. I work from home now and homeschool them bilingually, a difficult balance. For "maternelle" (preschool, age 3-5) we did no formal school program, just lots of reading, counting, playing and traveling, and they picked up the whole national program and much more, though their English is still much stronger than their French. Now that they are 6 we are trying to be just a bit more regular about it, to work through school manuals systematically and do a few hours of lessons each week when the little one doesn't interrupt us too intensely. They are enrolled in a correspondance school here in France and we are slowly slogging through the workbooks, and slipping in lots of English curriculum. I hope to move towards more formal schooling over time but, for now, most of what I see them learning, the stuff that will stick with them forever, still happens outside of official lesson times.