18.04.2020

Reading Monteiro Lobato for children: a significant challenge

“I still end up making books where our children can live.” The famous Monteiro Lobato was the one who said this phrase, who managed to do what he proposed by writing books that would be so part of the universe of Brazilian children that the intentional intervention of an author would be invisible to them.

Even though these issues may go unnoticed by the young reader, the intermediation of the adult complements and enriches reading Lobato’s books. It places him as responsible for bringing up some issues, even said unpleasant ones, in discussion with the children. Rich in controversial themes, Lobato’s text was considered inappropriate for modern childhood, created (and rightly so!) to combat racism and misogyny, for example – both themes that can arise in the reading of the classic “Reinações de Narizinho.”

Intermediate reading of his work, therefore, allows us to introduce difficult topics to deal with children, mainly if we help them understand and compare the text’s difference, written a century ago, with the current practices we want to pass on. The “subject” is guaranteed: from the feminine behavior required at the time (to marry well, Narizinho announces Emília as being very “gifted,” able to sew her dresses and cook hard sweets), to the insults made to dear Tia Nastácia, for being black. Just a little push from the intermediary is enough for children to become the first to point out absurdities and identify how much we have evolved in the situations described.

This reflection becomes, therefore, one of the richest aspects when we deal with the reading of the author mentioned above, as it allows us to extract from the literature what of most interesting it gives us: a portrait of the world as it was at the moment when the story happens so that we can reflect and build the present taking advantage of the good that is given to us, and “fixing” what is dated, since the error pointed out in fiction is often easier to be solved than the problems of everyday life, that we are invariably surrounded. Once the question concerning the ideas is eliminated, its resolution seems much closer in the real world – and that is precisely  what we need children to believe in so that they can always face what goes wrong in their path.

Text was written by Tainá Moterani – Beacon’s Elementary School Library Teacher.