How Reading in French Shaped My Writing
- Stephanie Thomas
- Dec 5, 2025
- 3 min read
A personal reflection inspired by the magic of multilingual storytelling
Some books stay with you forever, not just because of their story, but because of when and how you read them. For me, one of those books was Le Petit Prince. I first read it during my second year of high school French, entirely by accident. I had just finished an assignment early and was looking for something quiet to do while everyone else finished. I wandered over to the classroom shelf, pulled out a slim little book with a watercolor cover, and thought, Why not?
I didn’t know it then, but that small, spontaneous moment would shape me as a reader, and later, as a writer.
✨ Learning a Language Through Stories
Up until that day, French had mostly been verbs, conjugation, vocabulary quizzes, and scripted dialogues. But reading Le Petit Prince felt different. Suddenly, French wasn’t just a subject, it was a doorway.
I read slowly, sometimes sounding out words under my breath, tracing sentences with my finger, flipping through a french/english dictionary, rereading lines until meaning shimmered through. I wanted to understand the fox, the rose, the prince’s quiet wisdom. Because I cared about the story, the language settled into my mind in a way that worksheets never could.
There’s a special kind of magic in learning a language through stories. You’re not just memorizing; you’re discovering. You chase meaning like a treasure, celebrate every sentence you decode, and feel strangely proud of every page you reach.
✨ How Reading in Another Language Sparked My Imagination
Fantasy thrives on wonder, and reading in French introduced me to a different kind of wonder, soft, delicate, and gently unfamiliar.
The slight distance created by the language made everything feel more dreamlike, like I was reading through a veil of starlight. The phrasing felt poetic, the emotions subtle and deep. It was as if the story existed in two places at once: in its original language, and in the quiet space I was building inside my mind to understand it.
It taught me:
that magic doesn’t have to be loud to be powerful
that simple words can carry enormous meaning
that sometimes the quietest stories echo the longest
These ideas shaped the way I write fantasy today. I love crafting worlds where magic hides in everyday moments, where emotions have weight, and where characters uncover pieces of themselves along the way.
✨ Why Kids Benefit From Reading in Multiple Languages
You don’t need perfect fluency to enjoy a story in another language. In fact, the uncertainty is part of the adventure. Kids who read, even briefly, in another language can sometimes learn something incredibly valuable: It’s okay not to understand everything at once. They grow curious, resilient, and open to new ways of thinking.
Reading multilingual or translated stories:
builds empathy
introduces new rhythms and imagery
encourages creative thinking
boosts confidence
shows that stories exist in many forms across cultures
Fantasy becomes even richer when kids imagine how magic looks in someone else’s language.
✨ The Magic That Stayed With Me
Even now, when I sit down to write, I hear soft echoes of Le Petit Prince, its quiet wisdom, its gentle sadness, its truth that “what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Reading it that day in French class didn’t just help me understand a new language; it helped me understand myself as a storyteller.
A book I picked up to pass the time ended up opening an entirely new door in my imagination. And sometimes, that’s how the best magic happens, quietly, unexpectedly, waiting on a shelf.
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