MY SWEET-ORANGE TREE, children's classic not out of print since 1968

MY SWEET ORANGE TREE
JOSÉ MAURO de VASCONCELOS (tr. Alison Entrekin)
Pushkin Children's Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$15.95 paperback, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: A WORLDWIDE CLASSIC OF CHILDREN'S LITERATURE: a moving, life-affirming story of a mischevious boy from Brazil and the power of kindness and imagination.

Meet Zezé—Brazil's naughtiest and most loveable boy, his talent for mischief matched only by his great kindness.

When he grows up he wants to be a poet with a bow-tie, but for now, he entertains himself playing pranks on the residents of his family's poor Rio de Janeiro neighborhood and inventing friends to play with. Zezé’s pranks can be a little too mischievous – at least, so say his parents, who punish him harshly when he misbehaves. His father is out of work and the family unhappiness falls hardest on Zezé, the second-youngest of seven siblings. That is, until he meets a real friend, and his life begins to change. With the help of Pinkie, the talking orange tree, Manuel, who gives Zezé rides in his car, and with his own endless supply of resourcefulness and imagination, Zezé will triumph over any adversity.

This worldwide classic of children's literature has never been out of print in Brazil since it was first published in 1968. Translated into an astonishing number of languages, it has won the hearts of millions of young readers from Korea to Turkey, Poland to Thailand, and many other countries too, with its inimitable blend of the heart-rending and the whimsical.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Pinkie the orange tree stole my heart.

With a start, I scrambled up and stared at the little tree. It was strange because I always talked to everything, but I thought it was the little bird inside me that made everything talk back. ‘But can you really talk? ‘Can’t you hear me?’ And it gave a little chuckle. I almost screamed and ran away. But curiosity kept me there. ‘How do you talk?’ ‘Trees talk with everything. With their leaves, their branches, their roots. Want to see? Place your ear here on my trunk and you’ll hear my heartbeat.’ I hesitated a moment, but seeing its size, my fear dissipated. I pressed my ear to its trunk and heard a faraway tick… tick…

Magic...a message that, all by itself, makes me want to give this book to every eight-year-old on the planet. The sweetness, the charm...the truth-telling about trees and their ability to communicate that he could not have known when he wrote the book in the 1960s. (It came out in Brazil in 1968.)

As a lonely, neglected child in the 1920s, the author needed more than he found in his family. He was like Zezé, and it shows...the siblings almost old enough to be parents, the parents mostly gone...these resonate with millions of us. Zezé seeks out any- and everything as he quests for the human necessity of connection, communication, and affection.

There is the period-appropriate distant, minatory father, full of his own rage and not looking at Zezé as a person to be formed but a mouth to be fed. The happiness Zezé seeks won't come from the angry, punishing papa, or the moveable street singer, or even his immobile friend Pinkie the sweet-orange tree...but being an energetic, curious, bright child, he does find the role model/friend he seeks in Manuel.

It would raise eyebrows into hairlines today for an adult man to bond with. I get vey sad thinking about this because the result of our culture's deeply sick relationship to sex and sexuality makes most parents very suspicious...hostile...to adults interacting with their kids. No wonder society is so very fragmented and solitary, so unsympathetic...we beat the sunny curiosity and openness to love out of our Zezés.

Rant over. I'd like to leave you with a beautiful sentiment to clean outthe anger of 2025. Take this away with you, and gift it to that middle-grade child who seems lost but has little to do.

Gran had once said that happiness is a ‘sun shining in your heart’. And that the sun lit up everything with happiness. If it was true, the sun in my heart made everything beautiful.