Amazonian writer launches children’s book “The boy who lived on the pole”, in Manaus

Manaus (AM) – The writer from Parintins Rogério Mascarenhas, better known as “Romahs”, launches this Saturday (8), the children’s literature book “The boy who lived on the pole”, at 9 am, in Parque do Mindu, located on Rua Domingos José Martins , Dez de Novembro Park, Center-South Zone of Manaus. The book is produced by Editora REGGO, with drawings by Romahs and artwork by Tieê Santos.

“The book tells the story of two friends who measure 10 cm tall, Severiano and Benedito, who, alongside a girl who commands 50 terrible magic cabas, Zuleide, go deep into the immense Amazon Forest to recover a precious object that is being taken to be given as a gift to a magical being, the butterfly girl Clara, who will be born to reign over all tiny beings, both the magical people ‘Gitinho’ (to which Severiano and Zuleide belong), as well as insects and other small living beings who live in the woods. On this journey, they face terrible dangers, such as gigantic snakes, jaguars and an army of zombie ants, commanded by a fungus-king”,

explains the writer.

According to the book’s synopsis, the protagonists of the story are so small that they travel on the backs of two iguanas. She flies on the backs of feared killer cabs that blindly obey her. The protagonists venture across the dazzling and terrible Amazon Forest, its dangers and deadly traps, to the one that will be born from a cocoon to govern the little ones of that immense world, a gift from the Grandmother Goddess of all that exists.

“In 2019 I decided to take the book out of the drawer and sign up for a culture notice to capitalize on finally publishing it. I won the public notice and when I returned to the original work I felt that it was incomplete, that it needed a second part for the story I had created”, he says.

“From the book as it was at the beginning, the most beautiful and intact thing I had were the original illustrations made with a lot of dedication, with watercolor and colored pencils and I ended up not even using them. The handwritten text in an old notebook or its typed version, stuck in some moldy floppy disk, did almost nothing to help me. I had to rewrite it. And, in that process, I started to think about a continuation, a new adventure starting from the point where the one I created first left off, 24 years before. Thus came the second part, the adventure in our Amazon jungle”, he adds.

The names of the protagonists: Zuleide, Severiano, Benedito and Clara are tributes to the author’s grandparents and the references to create the story are childhood memories in the city of Parintins, in the interior of the state of Amazonas, where he was born and lived until he was 14 .

“I often say that I wrote this book especially for the wild and fanciful boy I was as a child, as I know he would love to read and would certainly get involved with the story and its events that he would find incredible. I think he would put this book on the shelf in his heart next to The three Musketeers, Around the world in 80 days, Treasure Island, The Adventures of Robin Hood and so many other universes of adventure and magic that fascinated him. This book is also a way of talking to him. To tell him that, just as the poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade discovered about himself as an adult, his story at that moment and what would come later is also more beautiful than that of Mogli, the wolf boy or that of the shipwrecked Robson Crusoé”,

declare.

According to the author, the idea for the book came at the same time that his first daughter, Beatriz Mascarenhas, was born, who was also a book reviewer and screenwriter at Estúdios Maurício de Sousa, but needed to be “matured” for more than two decades.

“I wrote some versions of the text and did several illustrations, but I always put it aside, prioritizing other projects and working to pay the bills and household expenses. He was eventually reduced to spurts of frightened, guilty memory as he promised he wouldn’t relegate him to a forgotten, abandoned dream. That it wouldn’t be like the comics I created as a child and died of starvation, locked in the back of a drawer. So one day I fulfilled the promise and went back to him”,

highlights Romahs.

Children’s Literature BookThe Boy Who Lived on the Pole In 2019, he won the Cultural Conexões Cultural public notice from the Manaus Culture Secretariat, ManausCult.

Book release

Among the attractions at the launch of the book, there will be an outdoor art exhibition called “Os Gitinhos”, which consists of the exhibition of 10 characters molded with the biscuit handicraft technique by the visual artist Lorena Souza from the layouts designed by the author and based on characters from their own book. These 15 cm dolls will be scattered among the vegetation along one of the park’s beautiful wooded trails.

On the same day, the book’s artbook will be released (a booklet, like a sketchbook, with studies of characters, scenarios, scenes and illustrations that were mostly left out of the book or from which only clippings were used). The artbook is an idealization of the final artist of the book, Tieê Santos, who had the idea of ​​bringing these beautiful images not used in the book to the public.

About the author

Romahs is Brazilian, from the Amazon city of Parintins. Award-winning visual artist at salons such as Humor and Graphic Art in Amazonas and a prestigious comic artist: the comic work, in partnership with screenwriter Emerson Medina, “The Last Arrow”was nominated for important literary and graphic arts awards such as HQ MIX, the Oscar for Brazilian comics, as well as the ABERST Prize for Literature, in addition to appearing in the HQ BRASIL catalog as one of the 100 best Brazilian comics of the last ten years.

Romahs is also a screenwriter and is part of the group of screenwriters at MSP studios, owned by the legendary cartoonist Maurício de Sousa, creator of Turma da Mônica comics. For nearly three decades, Romahs has been working in Manaus as a cartoonist, caricaturist and illustrator for newspapers, magazines and books. This publication, The boy who lived on the poleis his second work of fictional children’s literature as a writer, the first was All my cats backwhich competed for the JABUTI prize for literature.

Partners

In addition to ManausCult, which sponsored the book, the author had a partnership with his daughter, writer and screenwriter Beatriz Campos, who did the first critical reading and spell check of the book; editor Marcicley Reggo, who did the layout and design of the cover; the designer Tieê Santos who made the artwork for the illustrations and Editora Reggo who invested in the book, publishing it.

Award-winning illustrator Tieê Santos, in addition to working on the artwork for the illustrations, also had the idea of ​​using the surplus material for another publication, the book’s artbook.

*With advisory information

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