​Daniel Pennac is a great french writer, known for his novels and books for children.

Pennac worked as a high school teacher of french language as well for nearly twenty five years. His teaching experience inspired him to write an essay collection Comme un roman (Gallimard 1992), that became well known in France. Pennac writes there about his love of literature and about how he tries to inspire it in his students as well, to get them interested in reading, although there is a big competition of fast experience of audiovisual media. Chagrin d'école indirectly connects to the topic opened in the book Comme un roman.