Read Alleen op de wereld in Dutchwith every sentence explained

Alleen op de wereld by Hector Malot was first published in 1878. In Passage you read the full text in the Dutch translation by Gerard Keller, marked intermediate and filed under children and young adult. It runs to about 180,600 words.

“I am a foundling.” Eight years old, sold to a stranger, and alone in the world.

Rémi grows up in the French village of Chavanon, loved by kind Mother Barberin and sure she is his real mother. Then her husband comes home from Paris, injured and penniless, and reveals the truth: the boy was found as a baby on a Paris street. With no money to feed an extra mouth, Barberin hands Rémi over to a wandering street musician.

So begins Rémi's life on the road with old Signor Vitalis and his little troupe — the clever dog Capi, the dogs Zerbino and Dolce, and the mischievous monkey Joli-Cœur. Through snow, storms, hunger and friendship, Rémi learns to read, to perform and to survive, always hoping to find out where he truly belongs.

Hector Malot's 1878 novel is one of the best-loved children's books ever written, adapted again and again for film and television — including a famous anime series.

Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in Dutch. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:

• a natural translation of that exact sentence,
• a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
• the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
• all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.

It's marked intermediate: comfortable once everyday Dutch feels familiar, with the harder sentences one tap away. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.