Madeline

What's inside (8 sections)

1. The old house in Paris and two straight lines
2. The crying in the night and Miss Clavel
3. Flowers, toys, and the scar
4. Going home in two straight lines
5. Bemelmans, rhyme, and pictures of Paris
6. Why it lasts, what creaks, and what came next
7. Key takeaways
8. FAQ

I came back to Madeline as an adult because I kept hearing that opening in my head and I wanted to know if the rest of the book held up. It does, but in a stranger way than I remembered. What I recalled was a sweet story about Paris. What I found was a book that is funny about fear, calm about hospitals, and very clear about how children watch each other. It is short enough to read in ten minutes, yet it has stayed in print since 1939, first from Simon & Schuster and now in a 56 page Viking hardcover edition, ISBN 9780670445806. That long life makes more sense once you walk through it slowly.

The book tells one small incident from start to finish. Twelve girls live together in Paris under the care of Miss Clavel. The smallest girl, Madeline, gets sick in the night with appendicitis. She goes to the hospital, has an operation, recovers, comes home, and shows off her scar. The other girls decide they want scars too. That is the whole plot. Bemelmans stretches it with rhyme, pictures of Paris, and a lot of attention to routine. The charm is in how steady the telling feels even when the subject is scary.

The old house in Paris and two straight lines

The book opens with the most famous setup in American picture books:

In an old house in Paris That was covered with vines Lived twelve little girls In two straight lines.

He adds right after that the smallest one was Madeline. Those lines are the whole contract with the reader. You know the place, the number, the order, and the exception. Everything after that plays with order and exception.

Bemelmans spends the first pages showing the daily march of life. The twelve little girls leave the house each morning in two straight lines. They go to the zoo, to the park, to school, to bed at half past eight. Miss Clavel is always with them. She is the teacher who keeps the line straight. In pictures she is tall in a dark habit-like dress with a white collar, often with her hands folded or held out to guide. In words she is calm and watchful. She turns off the light at night. She checks on them. She worries when worry is needed and smiles when things are fine.

Madeline is introduced as the contrast. She is the smallest, but she is also the boldest. While the others walk carefully, she does things that make adults nervous. She is not afraid of mice. She is not afraid of tigers at the zoo. She shows off on the bridge over the Seine. She frightens Miss Clavel half to death by clowning near the edge, and then laughs. The other girls say goodnight and go to sleep. Madeline stays awake a little longer in spirit, even when she sleeps. You get the sense that order exists so Madeline can poke at it.

Paris itself is a character here. Bemelmans draws the Eiffel Tower, the Seine, the Opera, Notre Dame, the Luxembourg Gardens, the Tuileries, the Place Vendome. Some pages are in yellow and black and white, spare and quick. The Paris pages burst into color. Trees are green and loose. Sky is wide. Buildings have that slightly tilted, hand drawn feel. For many American children in 1939, this was a first look at Paris, and Bemelmans knew it. He had lived in France and Austria and worked in hotels and restaurants before he became a painter and writer. He paints Paris as orderly and pretty from a distance, then fills it with pigeons, carriages, nuns, chimney smoke, and small daily noise when you get close.

The rhyme carries all of this. It is mostly couplets, short lines, simple words. In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines. Lived twelve little girls in two straight lines. The beat never strains for effect. It clicks along like feet on pavement. That is why children memorize it fast. It also lets Bemelmans handle scary material without raising his voice. When the tone stays light, a midnight emergency feels manageable.

The crying in the night and Miss Clavel

Halfway through the routine, the book turns. In the middle of the night, Madeline cries. Not a small cry. She weeps and wails. Miss Clavel runs to see what is wrong. She knows something is seriously off. The picture for this moment is famous for a reason. Miss Clavel, in her nightgown, rushes down the hall with a candle while the other girls sit up in bed. It is dark, the lines of the beds repeat down the room, and one small figure is bent over in pain.

Miss Clavel calls the doctor. The doctor arrives, looks at Madeline, and says she needs her appendix out. There is no long debate. The adults act quickly. An ambulance comes. Madeline is taken to the hospital. The other girls watch. Bemelmans does not hide that this is frightening. He also does not dwell on pain in a way that would overwhelm a small reader. The focus stays on process. Someone noticed. Someone came. Someone decided. Someone drove her to help.

I like how Miss Clavel is drawn here. She is not a joke authority figure. She is competent. She breaks the routine the moment routine stops working. Earlier she kept two straight lines because that kept twelve children safe in a city. Now she breaks the line because one child needs something different. That shift tells you what kind of caretaker she is. Rules serve safety. When safety needs speed and comfort, she gives that instead.

The hospital pages change the palette. The old house was warm and vine covered. The hospital is clean and white. Madeline lies in a bed with a bandage. Nurses move around. The doctor is calm. Bemelmans gives the operation one line and moves on. He does not show cutting or blood. He shows the before and the after. Before: a sick girl in the night. After: a girl in bed with flowers around her. For a child reader in the 1930s, or now, that choice matters. The book admits that operations happen and then insists that care follows.

Flowers, toys, and the scar

Recovery is the longest middle stretch of the book, and Bemelmans fills it with visits and gifts. Madeline's father comes with flowers and candy. The other eleven girls come with their teacher. Everyone is kind. Madeline is propped up in bed, pale but cheerful, surrounded by dolls and boxes. She eats ice cream. She reads. She rests. The pictures show a room that feels more like a sunny sitting room than a ward. There are no beeping machines in these drawings. There is a window, a chair, a nurse with a tray.

Then comes the detail every child remembers. Madeline stands up and shows the scar from her operation. It is a thin line on her stomach. She is proud of it. The visitors look. In the drawings the scar is small and neat. In the story it functions like a badge. Madeline went somewhere frightening and came back with proof that she was brave and that doctors helped her.

Bemelmans adds a sly recovery beat that modern parents still laugh at. Madeline gets attention, good food, rest, and time to play. She is told she is better. She believes it. She acts like it. The book treats recovery as both medical and social. The body heals, and friends confirm the healing by admiring it.

This is also where the humor sharpens. The other girls feel glad. They also feel jealous. They look at the toys and the ice cream and the fuss, and they look at the scar, and they decide they want the same. Bemelmans writes it plainly. They want to have their appendix out too. It is a perfect child logic moment. Adults see surgery and think risk. Children see presents and think reward. The book does not scold them for it.

If you read this aloud to a three or four year old, this is the page where they lean in. They want to see the scar. They want to lift their own shirt and check their stomach. They want to know if it hurt. Bemelmans gives you just enough to answer. Yes, she cried in the night. No, she is fine now. Look, she is standing. Look, she is smiling. That rhythm of scare then comfort is the emotional engine of the whole book.

Going home in two straight lines

The return home restores the opening pattern with a small twist. The girls leave the hospital in two straight lines, as always. They break bread at home, as always. They brush their teeth, as always. They go to bed, as always. Miss Clavel turns off the light and says goodnight. But now the goodnight scene has new content. The girls show their stomachs. They compare. They ask for scars of their own. Miss Clavel listens and smiles and settles them.

That ending is why the book feels complete even though almost nothing happens by adult plot standards. The start gave us order. The middle gave us a break in order. The end gives us order again, but changed by experience. The girls still sleep in the same beds. Miss Clavel still turns out the light. Madeline is still the smallest. Yet everyone has a new story to carry. Madeline has proof she was brave. The others have a new wish. Miss Clavel has proof her quick action worked.

Bemelmans also closes the Paris loop visually. The walk home passes familiar streets and bridges. The house is still covered with vines. The lines are still straight. Children find comfort in that repetition. The world did not collapse because one night went wrong. The city is still there. Dinner is still there. Bedtime is still there. For a young reader who has been to a doctor or stayed overnight somewhere strange, that message lands without needing to be stated.

Read page by page, the pacing is careful. Two spreads of introduction. Two spreads of daily life and mischief. One spread of night crying. One spread of doctor and ambulance. Two spreads of hospital. One spread of visitors and scar. Two spreads of homecoming and bedtime. The text never crowds the pictures. The pictures never repeat the text exactly. When words say they went to the zoo, pictures show which animals and how Madeline reacted. When words say they brushed their teeth, pictures show twelve small figures in a row with cups and brushes. That back and forth keeps a very short text feeling full.

Bemelmans, rhyme, and pictures of Paris

Ludwig Bemelmans was born in Austria in 1898 and came to the United States as a young man after a difficult youth and years working in hotels. He painted murals, drew for magazines, wrote for adults as well as children, and illustrated his own books. Madeline grew in part from his own life in France and from a childhood memory of a school friend and of illness. He understood both the glamour of Paris and the strictness of old style boarding schools. That double knowledge gives the book its balance. The city is lovely. The school is firm. A bold child can thrive between those poles.

The verse is easy to underestimate because it sounds simple. Short couplets in mostly four beat lines. Plain diction. Few hard words. But try writing thirty pages that keep that beat without tripping. Bemelmans rarely forces a rhyme. He lets sentences run short when action is fast and a little longer when the scene needs calm. He repeats key phrases, straight lines, old house, Miss Clavel, to anchor listeners. Teachers still point to Madeline as an early example of how rhyme can aid memory and prediction. A child hears Paris and waits for vines to resolve. Hears Clavel and waits for night to settle.

The art does equal work. Bemelmans worked quickly with ink and wash, then added color for selected spreads. In the first edition and in the current Viking hardcover, you see the contrast clearly. Many interior scenes use black ink with yellow wash, economical and warm. Paris exteriors and key emotional beats get full color. The Eiffel Tower looms. The hospital room glows. Miss Clavel's rush down the dark hall gains force because yellow candlelight cuts black shadow. He was a muralist, used to thinking at wall size, and you feel it in how he fills a wide page with a row of beds or a street that runs to the horizon.

Publishing history helps explain the publisher question readers often hit. The true first edition was Simon & Schuster in New York in 1939. Viking took over the Madeline books later and keeps them in print today, which is why library records often list Viking Press or Viking Books for Young Readers and why Wikipedia lists Viking. Both names are correct for different moments. Year stays 1939 either way because that is when the story first appeared. Page counts shift a little by printing because picture books are counted differently, unpaged in early issues, listed as 48 to 56 in modern records. The current hardcover is listed at 56 pages.

Rejection is part of the story too. Bemelmans first offered Madeline to a publisher who turned it down as too sophisticated and too costly to print with color. That sounds odd now, when the book looks so natural for children. At the time, a rhymed story set in Paris with a hospital operation and a scar was not an obvious seller. Simon & Schuster took the chance. A year later the American Library Association named Madeline a Caldecott Honor Book for 1940, confirming that the art was special. The medal that year went to Abraham Lincoln by Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire. Madeline stood beside it as a very different kind of achievement, small, urban, modern, funny.

The Caldecott Honor matters for how we read the pictures now. The award looks at illustration as serious art. Bemelmans won attention for composition, for the way twelve figures can form a pattern that stays tidy and lively, for the way a single small figure can bend that pattern without breaking the page. Look at the bridge scene. Eleven girls step back. One steps forward. The line holds and bends.

Why it lasts, what creaks, and what came next

Madeline lasted because it solves a problem for parents and teachers. How do you talk about sudden illness without making it sound either trivial or terrifying. Bemelmans finds a middle path. He shows pain, quick adult help, a hospital that is clean and kind, a recovery with treats, and a return to normal life. He lets the sick child be proud rather than ashamed. He lets the well children be jealous rather than pious. That honesty about envy is rare in 1930s books for the very young and it still feels fresh.

The sequels extended that world without repeating the same night. Madeline's Rescue in 1953 brought a dog into the school and won the Caldecott Medal. Later books took Madeline to London, to Christmas, to new mishaps. Bemelmans finished Madeline's Christmas shortly before his death in 1962. After him, his grandson John Bemelmans Marciano continued the line with new titles. Television specials, a film, dolls, and stage versions followed.

Fair criticism belongs here too. By current standards the hospital stay looks unreal. No insurance forms. No IV lines. No tired night nurses. Just flowers and ice cream. That softness is comforting, but it can mislead a child headed for a real procedure. Parents may want to add context. This was 1939. This is a story, not a guide. Real hospitals have more noise and more waiting.

Some readers also notice how thin the plot is if you strip out pictures and rhyme. A girl gets sick and gets better. The other girls want surgery. The end. If you read only for story, you may find it slight next to modern picture books that pack jokes on every page or build a clear arc of change. Madeline does not change much. She starts bold and ends bold. Miss Clavel starts kind and ends kind. The pleasure is in pattern and voice, not transformation.

The school itself can read as dated. Twelve girls in one house under one teacher, marching in formation, brushing teeth in a row, going to bed at the same minute. Modern classrooms stress choice and voice. Bemelmans stresses cohesion. I find that historical distance useful rather than harmful, as long as an adult names it. This is how a certain kind of Paris school looked almost a century ago. Children can enjoy the march while knowing their own school works differently.

Who is it for. Ages three to eight is the standard range, and that feels right. At three, children enjoy the beat and the pictures and the scar reveal. At five, they catch the joke about wanting an operation. At seven or eight, they can talk about why Madeline is not afraid and whether bravery means not feeling fear or acting while feeling it.

If you pick up the current Viking hardcover, read it twice. First time straight through for sound. Second time slowly for pictures. Count the girls in each line. Find the Eiffel Tower. Watch Miss Clavel's hands. Notice where yellow disappears and color arrives. The book is listed at 56 pages in this edition and unpaged in spirit, but it rewards that second look.

FAQ

What is Madeline about?

Twelve girls live in a Paris school under Miss Clavel. The smallest, Madeline, has appendicitis, goes to the hospital, recovers, and returns to classmates who admire her scar.

When was Madeline first published and did it win an award?

It was first published by Simon & Schuster in 1939. It was named a Caldecott Honor Book in 1940, and its sequel Madeline's Rescue later won the Caldecott Medal.

Is Madeline the first book in a series?

It is the first Madeline picture book, followed by sequels such as Madeline's Rescue. This post treats it as a standalone because the story is complete on its own.