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A worldwide classic of children's literature - a moving, life-affirming childhood story, finally available in English again
Meet Zezé - Brazil’s naughtiest and most loveable boy, his talent for mischief matched only by his great kindness. When he grows up he wants to be a ‘poet with a bow-tie’ but for now he entertains himself playing pranks on the residents of his family’s poor Rio de Janeiro neighbourhood and inventing friends to play with. That is, until he meets a real friend, and his life begins to change...
My Sweet Orange Tree is a worldwide classic of children’s literature – never out of print in Brazil since it was first published in 1968, it has also been translated into an astonishing number of languages and won the hearts of millions of young readers from Korea to turkey, Poland to Thailand and in many other countries too.
José Mauro de Vasconcelos (1920-84) was a Brazilian writer who worked as a sparring partner for boxers, a labourer on a banana farm, and a fisherman before he started writing at the age of 22. He is most famous for his autobiographical novel My Sweet Orange Tree, which tells the story of his own childhood in Rio de Janeiro.
179 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1968
With a start, I scrambled up and stared at the little tree. It was strange because I always talked to everything, but I thought it was the little bird inside me that made everything talk back.
‘But can you really talk?
‘Can’t you hear me?’
And it gave a little chuckle. I almost screamed and ran away. But curiosity kept me there.
‘How do you talk?’
‘Trees talk with everything. With their leaves, their branches, their roots. Want to see? Place your ear here on my trunk and you’ll hear my heartbeat.’
I hesitated a moment, but seeing its size, my fear dissipated. I pressed my ear to its trunk and heard a faraway tick… tick…
First I stopped at the church and took a look at the saints. I felt a little scared seeing the still statues, surrounded by candles. The winking candles made the saints wink too. I wasn’t sure if it would be nice to be a saint and have to be really still all the time.
Gran had once said that happiness is a ‘sun shining in your heart’. And that the sun lit up everything with happiness. If it was true, the sun in my heart made everything beautiful.

“Giờ đây tôi đã thực sự biết đau đớn là gì. Đau đớn không phải là bị đánh đến bất tỉnh. Đau đớn không phải là bị một mảnh thủy tinh cứa rách chân phải khâu nhiều mũi ở hiệu thuốc. Đau đớn là thế này đây: toàn bộ trái tim tôi nhức nhối, và tôi phải mang nó xuống mồ.”