Read Verteluurtje in Dutchwith every sentence explained

Verteluurtje by Hermanna was first published in 1921. In Passage you read the full text in the original Dutch, marked beginner and filed under children. It runs to about 25,200 words.

Sledges and snowballs, cherries and quarrels — a dozen small stories for a cosy hour.

In these gentle tales, ordinary Dutch children meet the big feelings of everyday life. Ben van Straten gets a brand-new sledge, painted light green, that his father built himself — and has to decide what to do with it. Annie and her little brother Piet can't stop squabbling over the painting table. Tom, the mayor's son, is a real rascal but always stands up for the weak, and old Hendrik threatens to chop down the cherry tree that never gives him a single cherry.

There are stories of fear and bravery, of friendship mended, of a dreamy little wood-carver called Fani, and, to close the book, a fairy tale about a shepherd's daughter, Gella, and her wise fairy godmother.

Written by Hermanna, the popular Dutch children's author Hermanna van Wermeskerken, and first published in 1921 with pictures by Jan Wiegman, this collection is short, warm and written in clear, nearly modern Dutch — ideal for learners.

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 beginner, so it's a good first whole book if you know the basics of Dutch 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.