We revise our chronology a little with Virginie Becket, school teacher and author of Jules and Léonie holiday notebooks which have the particularity of highlighting history.
Why did you choose this historical angle for a holiday notebook?
“Because as a school teacher and mother, explains Virginie Becket, not finding my happiness in the holiday notebooks, I wanted to write notebooks which have a good academic level and which teach a lot of things at the level of general culture for children.”
Virginie Becketat franceinfo
“Big question! answers Virginie Becket. It would be fun to ask the parents… The Middle Ages began in 476, when the Western Roman Empire fell, and so it ends with the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492. So a big period of more than 1000 years.”
During the third crusade, who are the kings of France and England? Louis IX and William the Conqueror? Or Philippe Auguste and Richard Coeur de Lion? Or François Iᵉʳ and Henri IV?
Answer : Philippe-Auguste and Richard the Lionheart
What fruits did the Crusaders discover in the East and then bring back to France? Is it orange and lemon, papaya and grape? Or banana and peach?
Answer : Orange tree and lemon
“It was the great chic at the king’s court to offer these fruits which in fact had really become luxury products, explains Virginie Becket. And it’s funny to see now in our time, when we go to visit the castles with our children, there are orange groves in all the big castles because really it was exotic. It was new, it was a great luxury to offer oranges and lemons to the court.”
And as we have revised for today, we meet tomorrow to open a new Holiday notebook !