Our fifth sentence is a bulky one, so brace yourself. As you will see, a lot of parsing of Japanese goes from right to left.
この亀の子をかわいそうだと思った浦島太郎は、「生き物をいじめてはいけないぞ。」と子供たちに言って、亀の子を助けてやりました。
In kana, this reads as:
このかめのこをかわいそうだとおもったうらしまたろうは、「いきものをいじめてはいけないぞ。」とこどもたちにいって、かめのこをたすけてやりました。
And in romaji it's:
kono kame no ko wo kawaisou da to omotta Urashima Tarou ha, "Ikimono wo ijimete ha ikenaizo." to kodomo tachi ni itte, kame no ko wo taskete yarimashita.
First, note the quotation, offset by the Japanese quotation marks 「 and 」. Before the quotation is the topic, marked by the topic particle は, and after the quotation, the main clause continues.
Let's look at the topic first. Directly before the は particle is our hero 浦島太郎 who you hopefully recognize by now as Urashima Tarou. Everything before this name is a relative clause saying something about Tarou. It's best translated as "who" followed by the contents of the clause.
Working from right to left again, you'll see there's a verb directly to the left of the name, 思った (おもった, omotta). This is the plain past tense of 思う, to think. The kanji 思 is N4 and occurs in 34 common words, most of which are related to thought or memories. There are two verbs that mean "to think" in Japanese; 思う is the one that's always used after the particle と, which here translates as "that." In other words, と思った浦島太郎 means "Urashima Tarou, who thought that..."
Working from right to left again, we see the clause この亀の子をかわいそうだ. The end of this clause is だ, the plain form of です, "to be." The clause starts with この亀の子. We know from before that 亀の子 means baby turtle. The この at the beginning means "this." Japanese distinguishes between "this" used as an adjective (as in "this book"), which is この, and "this" used as a pronoun (as in "You remember this?"), which is これ. Here it's この, because a noun follows.
For some reason I can't understand, この亀の子 is followed by を, the object particle. This makes no sense, because a) as we shall see, the baby turtle is obviously the subject of the clause, and b) the verb is だ/です, which doesn't take an object. I believe the particle should be が.
After this, there's かわいそう, which is an adjective typically written using only kana, and it means "poor" in the sense of "pitiful, pitiable, sad."
So, the topic (and also the subject) of the sentence is "Urashima Tarou, who thought that this baby turtle was pitiful, ..." A less literal, more natural-sounding translation might be the one given in the book: "Urashima Tarou, who felt sorry for this baby turtle, ..."
What follows is a quote (which we'll get to in a minute) followed by と子供たちに言って、
This is a te-form of the verb 言う (いう, iu) which means "to say." The kanji 言 is an N4 kanji occurring in 73 common words. All these words are somehow related to speaking or communication: words like promise, excuse, assertion, and so on. The -te form shows us that there's something else that Tarou was also doing, but we'll get to that later.
子供たちに features 子供, the word "child" we encountered before, たち (tachi) the pluralizer, and に (ni) meaning "to" --in this case, identifying the audience of the speech.
Finally, the と on the far left connects the verb "to say" with the quote. Because it's followed by an actual quotation, you'd probably leave it untranslated. Compare:
太郎はうれしいだと言った。Tarou said that he was happy.
太郎は「うれしいだ」と言った。Tarou said, "I'm happy."
So now we have:
Urashima Tarou, who thought that this baby turtle was pitiful, said to the children, "..."
The quote itself is a sentence: 生き物をいじめてはいけないぞ。This sentence ends in the particle ぞ (zo), which male speakers use to add force to the statement, and to make clear that the statement is a command. The te-form followed by はいけない means "You mustn't X" or "It's morally bad if you X." The verb X is here いじめて, from いじめる, the verb we saw before as meaning "to bully, to torment." So いじめてはいけないぞ is "You mustn't torment!"
The object of the verb is, as usual, indicated by the particle を, and it's 生き物 (いきもの, ikimono). The first kanji, 生, is N5 and occurs in 140 common words, many of which are about life or birth. 生きる means "to live." (We saw before that "live" in "I live in Tokyo" is a different verb, 住む, but that means "live" in the sense of "reside." This "live" means "to be alive, to lead your life.")
The second kanji 物 means "thing" or sometimes "person." Note that it's pronounced the same way as the second kanji of 若者 ("youngster"), and note that the meaning of the two is also fairly similar. You'll see this sometimes in Japanese: the same sound and meaning expressed by different kanji.
The kanji 物 is N4 and occurs in 135 common words, mostly at the end. Many words ending in 物 offer a clue to their meaning if you translate them literally: 着物 (kimono), "a thing to wear"; 化け物 (bakemono, "monster, ghost"): "a thing that transforms/assumes the shape of something"; 食べ物 (tabemono, "food"): "a thing to eat"; 動物 (doubutsu, "animal"): "a thing that moves."
It should make sense that 生き物 means "living thing."
So what Tarou says, forcefully, is "You mustn't torment a living thing!"
The last part of the sentence, after 言って, is what Tarou does after saying this:
亀の子を助けてやりました。
On the left is our baby turtle again, this time as the object of 助けてやりました。which is a verb in the polite past tense. The verb やる (literally "to do") after the te-form of a verb, like here, conveys something being done for someone else. It specifically refers to a favor being done to someone of equal or lower social status. You wouldn't use this construction when someone is doing something for, say, their boss or their parents. In this case, the little turtle is obviously Tarou's inferior, so it's OK. The construction is a bit hard to translate, if it needs to be translated at all.
The verb 助けて comes from 助ける (たすける, tasukeru), which means "to save; to help." 助 is an N3 kanji that occurs in 24 words, most related to saving or helping.
So this part of the sentence means: "[Tarou] saved the baby turtle." Or, more literally, "[Tarou] was so kind as to save the baby turtle."
So, in summary, the entire sentence reads:
Urashima Tarou, who thought that the baby turtle was pitiful, said to the children, "You mustn't torment a living thing!" and saved it.
(I used "it" at the end because, unlike in Japanese, there's no need to repeat "the baby turtle.")
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