The first of April is the day of hoaxes, pranks, and jokes. In France, the tradition is to hang paper fish on people's backs and shout, "Poisson d'avril!" (April Fish!).

Patricia explores the origin of the poisson d'avril (April Fools') tradition. There are numerous theories about this, some of them contradictory.

Using her favorite fruits as examples, Patricia demonstrates some different ways of saying you "like" or "love" something in French.

Patricia will teach you how to say that you don't like something in tactful ways and in more direct ways. There are many interesting expressions to convey dislike, even disgust, but you might want to save some of them for private conversations.

Victor Hugo is best known for his novels The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Les Misérables, but he also wrote numerous poems. In this video, Patricia reads an excerpt from his poem "À l'Arc de Triomphe," in which he pays tribute to the city of Paris.

Maxime Duveau held a solo exhibition at the Espace à Vendre gallery in Nice. The show included large-scale drawings in charcoal based on photos that he took in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Maxime Duveau explains his art at his solo exhibition, which is based on photographs he took in San Fransciso and Los Angeles. He uses an interesting charcoal drawing technique he calls "masking."

L'Espace à Vendre gallery had an exhibition of works by Lucien Murat, who juxtaposes a wide range of materials on top of salvaged tapestries.

Enjoy the classic tale Le Petit Chaperon rouge (Little Red Riding Hood), as told by Patricia.

The original version of Le Petit Chaperon rouge, written by Charles Perrault, has a more gruesome ending than the one you might be familiar with. Patricia concludes the tale in this video.

Patricia introduces the famous French animated series Il était une fois (Once Upon a Time), which follows a time-traveling family through the high points of human civilization and into the future. We have several episodes available on Yabla, which you can find here, and more coming soon!

Patricia recites a famous poem by Jacques Prévert called "Barbara." The poem is set in Brest, a town that was devastated by German bombs in the Second World War.

Patricia explains the basic principles of French numbers and their usage, and shares a few grammatical points.

In part two of her lesson on numbers, Patricia counts from 41 to 100 in French. Be prepared to do some arithmetic!

Patricia reads "À une passante" (To a Passerby), a classic poem from Charles Baudelaire's collection Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil).