A charming story about a little boy who has a gift of story telling. The only problem is that his stories are rather peculiar and his classmates laugh at his constant efforts.

Francois decides to ignore his story telling abilities but something happens. He discovers that he is the Great Alphabet, the person who is responsible for enabling words to form imaginative stories. This calling is fraught with danger because there is already someone pretending to be the Great Alphabet and this person will not yield his power easily.

Francois is thrown into a big adventure as he grapples with this calling and whether or not it is something he actually wants to do. This is a children's story with good artwork and a nice story. It has magic, a young boy and a challenge for this young boy to be fully who he really is.

An interesting story for a young audience.

Copy provided by Europe Comics via Netgalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

An entertaining small comic book about the magical world of imagination, words, letters and fighting for what you like. The story itself is nice and the love for the written word translates to the readers. It was truly imaginative, when Francois thinks about certain situations. Entertaining and with a nice message, to not hear about others opinion but fight for your true passions. But not the best message for kids, that only one person has imagination and all others not, since normally all kids have the the most powerful imagination of all. The illustrations I loved, they were colourful and perfect for the story. But some field were quite hard to read, they were just to small.

Overall a nice little book with great and not so great messages. For sure a discussion is needed afterwards about the readers own imagination.

The synopsis sounded great and i really wish i had liked it more. This is a story about a little boy called François who has a very big imagination which unfortunately sees him being bullied for being himself, including from his family which sat really badly with me. The art is beautiful i cannot deny that. The artist is extremely talented. Unfortunately the story/plot fell flat for me and i could not get invested in any character. Perhaps this is my fault as i am not the desired audience for this graphic novel/comic however i normally do not have this issue. I'm not even sure this will appeal to the age range it is produced for.

The writing was difficult to read, i am unsure if this was just an issue with my copy or if the lettering is blurry for all. Hopefully this will not be the case in the final copy.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this i am just sorry i could not give it a better review.

The World According to François is a nice and short comic about the power of words and stories. Ten-year-old François is bullied because he comes up with these awesome stories and his stories have magic, or perhaps he has? He ends up learning he's the new Great Alphabet, who controls the letters with love and respect in order to create content-rich stories. At the center is of course the power of imagination that the old man doesn't have and thus the man had to control the letters with sheer force that made the letters weak. I really liked the approach, but the comic was too short to convey the idea. For a children's comic this was kind of grave with the fire and all, but otherwise this had all the building blocks for a great story. Also, there's never enough stories about stories!

The art looks quite nice and works well with the story. Especially the letter magic looks great! The speech bubbles are are bit stuffed and the font is quite thin, but this is still easy to follow. The downfall is mostly that this should've been longer or perhaps aimed at older readers with an older main character. The story would work better like that no doubt.

Francois is a little boy with a big imagination. He is always writing down stories and telling them to his classmates and teachers, but the bullies in school make fun of his stories and his teachers are exasperated with him. He meets a mysterious woman who tells him that he has a magical power over letters of the alphabet and can command any book to do his bidding. An evil man has seized control of the letters, and only Francois can restore balance to the secret world of authors.


I loved Francois' character! He has a good heart and enjoys using his intelligence to fantasize about other worlds and magical creations. He makes up stories about robot teachers, a green fish that blushes gold, and a father who tells pretend adventures to his sick son.
I loved the artistry that Francois discovers inside himself as his natural talent for writing is revealed. He learns to have more self-confidence in his abilities, and embrace his true self.

The story line has some good suspense and action, but the real draw is the magical letters and the mystery of the author's secret society. The letters are sentient, and they spy on Francois and follow him around to determine if he has the budding magical powers to direct the alphabet to create stories. The plot is so interesting and imaginative!

I can't really comment on the artwork, since the e-file that I got from NetGalley was a little blurry. As far as I can tell, it looks colorful and fun, and I liked the design of the characters. Sometimes the action was a little confusing, and I wasn't sure what was going on in each panel, but that might have been the low quality of the e-file.

A fun and inventive book with a good story line!

Disclaimer: I received an ecopy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a free and honest review. All the opinions stated here are my own true thoughts, and are not influenced by anyone.

This was a bit of a disappointment. It could have been a great story about imagination, writing, and standing up for oneself. Instead, it was weak on all counts.

François is a kid with a big imagination who likes making up stories, even though he gets bullied for his creativity. So he decides he doesn't want to write anymore. But he's then recruited by a mysterious woman and a sentient piece of paper to try to overthrow a very bad writer who dresses up in leopard skins and whips letters so they'll do his bidding.

If that ridiculous plot isn't bad enough, the message that the book sends is just dreadful. Apparently, only one person (François, of course) has imagination. He's the chosen one. The problem I have with this message is that it's a complete mismatch to its audience, which is presumably creative kids who enjoy writing their own stories. This story basically tells them that they don't have imagination, because only one special little snowflake does.

Aside from the story issues, there are some technical ones as well. There are a number of odd words throughout, mainly interjections, but still... they seem to have been ignored when the book was being translated. Also, the text is so small. I could barely read some of it, even zoomed in on a laptop screen; it would be next to impossible on an e-reader.

The illustrations are decent, but the story is just so ridiculous. (It even throws in a kid-with-cancer trope to further emphasize François's goodness. At least, I think that's why that rather gratuitous heartstring-tugging was included.)

I didn't like this as much as I thought I would. If I were an aspiring young writer reading a story about magic and writing and imagination, I wouldn't exactly want to be told that I'm a lost cause because I'm not the "chosen one".

This is a quirky little graphic novel about François, a little boy with a big imagination. But his imagination puts him in danger when he uncovers that an author, Adrien Osborn, is posing as the Great Alphabet and controlling all the words to write poor quality stories. Osborn will stop at nothing to keep hold of his power, including eliminating François, who must accept his fate as the Great Alphabet if he has a chance of defeating the selfish Osborn.

It's a sweet story with beautiful illustrations (although the eARC I received was very poor quality and all the images were blurred). Unfortunately, the story does not flow particularly well and I had difficulty in following it. However, the book is full of magic and imagination and I suspect that children will enjoy the concept and the bright illustrations.

This was a cute story about a little boy named Francois who is treated badly for using his imagination. The illustrations are very beautiful. I love how this book teaches you that it's alright to be different and to have an imagination.

This was a super cute book to read to a child, and my three boys enjoyed hearing about Francois and his world. The illustrations are amazing!
I like how this book teachers children to use their imaginations to answer questions they have about the world!