Read Lettres de mon moulin in Frenchwith every sentence explained

Lettres de mon moulin by Alphonse Daudet was first published in 1869. In Passage you read the full text in the original French, marked beginner and filed under children and historical fiction. It runs to about 45,400 words.

Sunshine, mischief and a pinch of magic from the south of France.

Alphonse Daudet has settled in an old windmill on a hill in Provence, among pine trees, crickets and the mistral wind. From there he sends his readers short tales full of warmth, humour and local colour: village legends, portraits of shepherds and millers, travel sketches from Corsica and Algeria.

The best-loved stories are classics in their own right. In "Monsieur Seguin's Goat", little Blanquette dreams of freedom on the mountain, whatever the danger. In "The Secret of Master Cornille", an old miller refuses to give up when steam mills arrive. In "The Elixir of the Reverend Father Gaucher", a simple monk saves his poor abbey with a miraculous liqueur, at a cost to his soul.

Letters from My Windmill is one of the most loved books in French schools, and its short, musical tales are perfect for reading one at a time.

Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in French. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:

• a natural translation of that exact sentence,
• a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
• the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
• all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.

It's marked beginner, so it's a good first whole book if you know the basics of French and want something you can finish. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.