Grammatical objectivism is a common illusion which academics and educationists live by. Yet, evidence of the metaphorical and narrative structure of mainstream grammatical "accounts" is relatively easy to establish. Preterition, comparison, deontic modality- to mention but a few notions and processes- are routinely understood via a small set of metaphors, image schemata and narratives. In this article, the case is made for composing new learner-friendly narratives that make overt use of the imaginative resources of human reason, while achieving high academic standards. Examples are given of meaningful and entertaining grammatical tales that were originally composed by a professional linguist for French schoolchildren aged 10-12. The tales were part of a large scale publishing project in France, bringing together language and education experts.
