Chagrin d'école

It's hard to insist on this book's importance without falling in the same pitfalls it (and the other "important" Pennac book, Comme un roman) denounces: I'm tempted to say they should be must-reads for all teachers, but one of Pennac main takeaway is precisely that obligation kills the reading experience, and more generally the learning experience. This book (like all books, like all knowledge) shouldn't be praised and put on a pedestal, lest it be sacralized and then inevitably forgotten on untouched bookshelves, but simply read, experienced - the book with do the work by itself.

More concretely, Chagrin d'école attempts to deconstruct the image of the cancre - the "bad" student -, specially the one the teachers hold of him, much in the same movement that the teachers should help the cancre deconstruct his own image as a bad student.

Easy to read, funny and insightful. The short chapters make it fly by, I couldn't stop reading.