This is a well-known children's book in Brazil, written by the author based on his own real experience, and twenty years of time precipitation have made this simple story exude a mellow aroma of fine wine.
The story is not complicated: the naughty boy Zeze lives in a poor family with a father, a mother, two sisters, a brother and a brother. His father was unemployed at home and grumpy, and his mother was busy with work and did not care well for Zeze. This is a family that lacks warmth due to material scarcity, or, without knowing how to express warmth, Zeze can only get a little affection from his sister and younger brother, and the expression of this family affection is often violent. Zeze could only confide in a small sweet orange tree as thin as he was, his best friend and his incarnation. One day, Zeze met Old Portuguese, a spirited truck driver. All encounters in the world are reunions after a long absence. Zeze's first encounter with Lao Gu was not beautiful, he naughtily picked up Lao Gu's truck and was beaten up by Lao Gu, but after that, the two personally established a relationship with father and son. Zeze even wanted to be adopted by the old Portuguese and return to Portugal with him.
Since Lao Lu became Ze Ze's "father", he has become like an owl, always staring at Ze Ze, everything Ze Ze does, Lao Lu praises well, but his praise is not the same as others.
"He's not like others, he always likes to say that this kid has a great future, and now I really understand what gentleness is, and I am gentle with everything I like," Zeze said softly to the little sweet orange tree in his heart.
Just when Zeze was full of hope for the future, bad news came one after another: first the municipal government wanted to widen the road and tear down the small sweet orange tree, and then the news that Lao Lu suddenly died in a car accident. Sawazawa suddenly lost two close friends, could not bear the blow, and fell ill. The family was very worried about the seriously ill Zeze, and he felt the warmth that he had been missing for a long time.
In the days that followed, whenever he thought of the good of old Portugal, Zeze cried unceasingly until that night. Disappearing for a long time, the little sweet orange tree in Sawazawa's fantasy world came to his dream with all the playmates in Sawazawa's backyard, and Sawazawa went to the place where the car accident occurred in Old Portugal, where Old Portugal seemed to merge with the sweet orange tree, and was once again crushed to pieces on the railroad tracks.
Sawazawa finally woke up, the little sweet orange tree bloomed its first flower, but Sawazawa no longer cried for any small things, because he knew that this little flower was the sweet orange tree and his farewell, he had left Zeze's fantasy world and entered his real and painful real world.
Overnight, Zeze went from being a naïve child to a sad adult because he knew that fairy tale worlds were all fake.
Despite the cruelty of reality, Zeze left his fantasy world to his younger brother, because the tenderness given to him by the old Portuguese was already in his blood.
When the fairy tale is destroyed, the child grows up, and only tenderness and love continue to be passed on. "It was you who taught me the tenderness of life. My dear Portuguese boy, today I send out small photos and marbles, because life without tenderness is not good. Forty-eight-year-old Zeze said.