Read Cuore in Italianwith every sentence explained

Cuore by Edmondo De Amicis was first published in 1886. In Passage you read the full text in the original Italian, marked beginner and filed under children and young adult. It runs to about 84,000 words.

One school year. One classroom in Turin. A diary full of heart.

It is October 1881, and young Enrico Bottini begins third grade with a new teacher, the kind and serious Maestro Perboni. In his diary he records everything: big-hearted Garrone who defends the weak, brilliant Derossi, the poor bricklayer's son, the bully Franti, and the small dramas and kindnesses of everyday school life.

Each month the teacher reads a story aloud, tales of brave children from every corner of Italy, from the little drummer boy of Sardinia to Marco, who crosses the ocean to find his mother in Argentina. Enrico's parents add letters of their own, teaching him what courage, gratitude and respect really mean.

Heart has moved generations of Italian readers since 1886. It is one of the most beloved children's books in the language, and its story "From the Apennines to the Andes" became a famous animated series.

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.