Dutch · Intermediate
Read Kees de jongen in Dutchwith every sentence explained
English title: Kees the Boy
Theo Thijssen · 1923
Free to start · iPhone, iPad & Mac
About the book
Kees de jongen by Theo Thijssen was first published in 1923. In Passage you read the full text in the original Dutch, marked intermediate and filed under historical fiction and young adult. It runs to about 112,200 words.
Twelve years old, Amsterdam, around 1900. A boy with enormous dreams and a heart full of Rosa.
Kees Bakels is twelve, and he is quite sure he is destined for greatness — even if, for now, he is just an ordinary boy in a crowded Amsterdam neighbourhood, sitting in class and hoping the teacher won't notice he hasn't finished his sums. Inside his head, though, he is a hero, a rescuer, a famous man everyone admires.
Most of all, Kees is secretly in love with Rosa Overbeek from his class, and he would do anything to impress her. But real life keeps getting in the way: his little sister Truus, his worried mother, money troubles at home and the strange, complicated world of grown-ups.
Theo Thijssen's Kees the Boy (1923) is one of the best-loved Dutch novels of all time — funny, tender and completely true to what goes on inside a child's head. It was turned into a musical and a 2003 film.
- Author
- Theo Thijssen
- First published
- 1923
- Language
- Dutch
- Level
- Intermediate
- Genre
- Historical Fiction, Young Adult
- Length
- About 112,200 words
How it opens
Vele mensen schijnen Kees Bakels niet eens te hebben gekend, en dat is eigenlik niet goed te begrijpen. Is hij niet zowat de belangrijkste jongen geweest, die er ooit bestaan heeft? Alleen door wat ongelukkige toevalligheden is hij geen beroemd man geworden, maar dat kon hij toch niet helpen? In ieder geval, het is geen reden, om maar te doen, alsof hij helemáál niet bestaan heeft.
Reading Kees de jongen in Passage
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.
