Italian · Beginner
Read C'era una volta... in Italianwith every sentence explained
English title: Once Upon a Time... Fairy Tales
Luigi Capuana · 1882
Free to start · iPhone, iPad & Mac
About the book
C'era una volta... by Luigi Capuana was first published in 1882. In Passage you read the full text in the original Italian, marked beginner and filed under children and fantasy. It runs to about 35,400 words.
Kings and queens, ogres and fairies, and a princess born with a toad's head.
Feeling ill and low, the great Sicilian novelist Luigi Capuana began writing fairy tales for his little nephews and nieces, and found himself happily lost for weeks in a world of magic. The result, published in 1882, became the founding collection of the Italian literary fairy tale.
Here you meet Tizzoncino, a baker's daughter as black as soot and always cheerful; Ranocchino, the smallest of seven poor brothers; a queen who gives birth to a serpent with a single golden tooth; a king who orders every mouse in the kingdom killed to stop a prophecy; a talking tree; a little princess abandoned on a mountaintop on her seventh birthday; and a penniless storyteller whose young listeners already know every tale he begins.
Capuana's stories have the rhythm of tales told aloud by the fire: short, surprising, often funny, and written in a lively, simple Italian that is perfect for learners.
- Author
- Luigi Capuana
- First published
- 1882
- Language
- Italian
- Level
- Beginner
- Genre
- Children, Fantasy
- Length
- About 35,400 words
How it opens
Queste fiabe son nate così.
Dopo averne scritta una per un caro bimbo che voleva da me, ad ogni costo, una bella fiaba, mi venne, un giorno, l’idea di scriverne qualche altra pei miei nipotini.
In quel tempo ero triste ed anche un po’ ammalato, con un’inerzia intellettuale che mi faceva rabbia, e i lettori non immagineranno facilmente la gioia da me provata nel vedermi, a un tratto, fiorire nella fantasia quel mondo meraviglioso di fate, di maghi, di re, di regine, di orchi, di incantesimi, che è stato il primo pascolo artistico delle nostre piccole menti.
Reading C'era una volta... in Passage
Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in Italian. 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 beginner, so it's a good first whole book if you know the basics of Italian and want something you can finish. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
