Piccino, and other child stories

A poor Italian peasant boy meets wealthy foreign visitors near the Italian Riviera and finds himself regarded with a curiosity that sits uneasily beside his affection for home. That encounter opens a collection attentive to the ways children move through adult worlds shaped by social class, family expectations and unfamiliar circumstances. Rather than treating childhood as a single experience, these four literary stories approach it through contrasting voices, settings and relationships.A private soldier’s narration brings military households in India and England into view through the loyalty and courage of a captain’s youngest child. Elsewhere, the perspective shifts from human recollection to the childlike first-person voice of a kitten, whose account of companionship, play, separation and misunderstood grief unfolds within a family garden. The unusual narrator lends animal companionship its own language while preserving the misunderstandings that can arise between children, adults and the creatures around them.Domestic life and travel settings meet in the personal account of Vivian, the real child whose kindness, imagination, curiosity and generosity inspired Little Lord Fauntleroy. Together, the stories explore childhood through poverty and privilege, military and family life, human affection and animal companionship. Their varied narrators keep the focus close to youthful perception, revealing how ordinary encounters can look markedly different when understood from a child’s-or a kitten’s-point of view. This book was out of print for decades and is now republished by Alpha Editions.It has been restored for today’s and future generations.This edition is not just a reprint - it’s a collector’s item and a cultural treasure.