My Sweet Orange Tree
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15
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Average rating4
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.
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Zeze is a precocious five-year-old who lives in a poor neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro. He enjoys playing tricks on others which upsets his family and results in many severe beatings. When Zeze finds a good friend, his life begins to change.
I am not sure if I ever read a children's book that made me feel such strong empathy for a character. Zeze is only five, and yet his life is full of pain and misery. He is only five, and yet he knows how to work, to make money, to make deals, to get along in life. He is only five, but he seems much older, and perhaps that is because he has had to become much more worldly.
My Sweet Orange Tree shares a life completely different from my own, though Zeze and I were both born at similar times. It is said to have been based on the author's own life, and the stories told sound very real.
