Read Piccoli eroi in Italianwith every sentence explained

Piccoli eroi by Cordelia was first published in 1892. In Passage you read the full text in the original Italian, marked beginner and filed under children. It runs to about 44,400 words.

Five restless children. One big sister. A summer of stories about everyday courage.

In Milan, the Morandi family has just lost its mother. Seventeen-year-old Maria promises her father, a railway clerk, that she will run the house and look after her five siblings: proud Carlo, who dreams of becoming a famous hero, vain Elisa, studious Vittorio, scatterbrained Mario and gentle little Giannina. It is a harder job than she ever imagined.

When summer comes, Maria takes them all to an old country cottage left by an uncle. In the evenings, gathered around her, the children listen to her stories of real heroes: a signalman's daughter, a village postman, a girl in the mountains, a boy in a workshop. Ordinary children who were brave when it mattered.

Written in 1892 by "Cordelia" (Virginia Treves), one of the best-loved Italian children's authors of her day, Little Heroes is warm, simple and full of heart.

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.