The other book that I was gifted to me by Mr S was Cache-Cache Ville. He chose this one from a selection that he thought might be suitable because, as his messages said ‘This is fun!’ and “It’s magic!’

The book takes you through the town Cache-Cache Ville, past les magasins et les maisons, la boulangerie, la poste, le bureau et l’usine, le parc, la piscine, le musée et le zoo. You see the outside of the building as you read the rhyming text. However, you can also see INSIDE the buildings and vehicles by using la loupe magique.

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I really enjoyed exploring using the red filter, finding out the secrets hidden behind the doors and windows. Love the man on the train with the really long legs and the person swinging from the luggage rack in the next carriage. And it’s great fun finding the zoo animals that seem to have ‘escaped’ from the zoo!

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You can also view the ‘magic pictures’ using an app. In the UK app store it’s called Hide and Seek City and costs 99p, which gives you access to mini videos and the opportunity to draw what you imagine is happening within the houses as well as the illustrations you can view with the magic magnifying glass alone. Below is a short video showing how it works.

You can also get Cache-Cache Ville in Spanish as Villa Escondite and Italian as Borgo Nascondino.  I don’t know how the text work in Spanish and Italian as I can’t see the inside of the book, but I like the French text as it gently rhymes and has some interesting words too.

Apparently Cache-Cache Ville was inspired by The Great Journey, published by Tate and also written by Agathe Demois and Vincent Godeau, that tells the story of Red Beak on his migration. Looks a lovely book too! (In French La Grande Traversée in Spanish La Gran Travesía in Italian La Grande Traversata in Portuguese A Grande Travessia and in Dutch De Lange Reis.)

Tags: booksfrenchmagic