by Edmondo De Amicis · 1886
Young Adult · Classics
A school year in Italy told as the journal of a boy of the third class, from October to July, with his father's and mother's letters and the monthly stories read in class. De Amicis wrote it for boys of nine to thirteen, and this is Isabel Hapgood's English translation.
Content note: A children's book of 1886 with the patriotic, moral and class attitudes of its time.
This book is specially dedicated to the boys of the elementary schools between the ages of nine and thirteen years, and might be entitled: “The Story of a Scholastic Year written by a Pupil of the Third Class of an Italian Municipal School.” In saying written by a pupil of the third class, I do not mean to say that it was written by him exactly as it is printed. He noted day by day in a copy-book, as well as he knew how, what he had seen, felt, thought in the school and outside the school; his father at the end of the year wrote these pages on those notes, taking care not to alter the thought, and preserving, when it was possible, the words of his son. Four years later the boy, being then in the lyceum, read over the MSS. and added something of his own, drawing on his memories, still fresh, of persons and of things.
Now read this book, boys; I hope that you will be pleased with it, and that it may do you good.
Edmondo De Amicis.
CONTENTS.
OCTOBER.PAGE
The First Day of School 1
Our Master 3
An Accident 5
The Calabrian Boy 6
My Comrades 8
A Generous Deed 10
My Schoolmistress of the Upper First 12
In an Attic 14
