A foundling sold to a travelling musician tramps the roads of France with a monkey, three dogs and an old man who teaches him a trade — and is looking for a mother he cannot describe. Malot wrote "Sans Famille" in 1878 and it became the book every French child was given; the poverty and the coal-mine flood are not softened for them. The reunions at the end are earned by two hundred pages of walking. Fifty-two plates by painters from Millet to Renoir follow the boy's road through fields, snow and village lanes, matching the hard rural world he walks.
