This month, Classroom Voces and Teacher’s Discovery are spotlighting authors who’ve turned their real classroom experience into comprehensible readers for World Language classrooms. These are stories born from real teaching experience—written to engage students, build language skills, and deliver results in the classroom.
Meet: Cécile Lainé
French teacher for nearly two decades, TWLTA (Tennessee) 2025 and SCOLT 2026 Teacher of the Year
Author of La planète grise series; Alice : La liste; La fille, le chien et le gobelet; and more
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What inspired you to write the "Gray Planet" series?
In 2020, I took a university course on Francophone graphic novels and became fascinated by the power of images to tell stories. I had also worked with the talented Jim Wooldridge (aka Señor Wooly) proofreading his graphic novels, and I really admired his storytelling skills.
At the same time, my students loved dystopian novels, and I’ve always been a fan of fantasy fiction. So I decided to hire a manga illustrator, Alkinz, and let my imagination run wild! I knew I wanted a dystopian world with strong, complex female characters, but I had no idea that La planète grise would eventually become a series of three—and soon four—books.
Shortly after the first book was published, teachers started contacting me on behalf of their students, asking if there would be a sequel. Their students had so many questions about the characters that I decided to explore their stories through prequels instead. It has been incredibly fun to dig deeper into their backstories!
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How do you teach this series? Do you have a favorite activity or lesson you use when teaching these books?
I teach La planète grise as a class novel with my 6th graders, who are early novice learners with some foundation in French. I also provide a free teacher guide to teachers who purchase a class set.
After reading the first book together, I put the other books in our classroom library. By then, students have the language, background knowledge, and motivation to read them independently.
One of my favorite activities is starting with the book cover and doing a predictive picture talk. We predict how the main characters are feeling and why, and what their relationship could be. Then we watch the book trailer together and revisit our predictions to see which ones were right. The anticipation is so much fun! The trailer is available in French, German, and Spanish.
Another student favorite is the marker game. It’s much easier to see it in action than to explain it, so I’ll let my students demonstrate! [Video link]
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How have your own students received the books? What do your students love about reading them?
My 6th graders love reading La planète grise together, and every year so far, they have asked if they can reenact the story in French as a culminating project!
But what I love most is how invested they become in the characters. They have all kinds of theories about who Eru really is, and they practically run to the classroom library to read the prequels and find out whether they’re right. Spoiler alert: They typically aren’t. :)
Of course, fantasy fiction isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and sometimes I have students who don’t connect with the story. That’s okay! One of the things I love about using a graphic novel is that it opens the door to so many engaging, hands-on activities without requiring us to spend weeks studying the book. We typically finish reading La planète grise in just 6–8 60-minute classes, leaving plenty of time to explore, create, and have fun with the story.
You can check out Cécile’s La planète grise and her other titles by clicking here.
You can collaborate with Cécile on IG and FB at @Towardproficiency or via her website, Towardproficiency.com.
