Writing, reading, storytelling--the love story of Sinha, Malhado, Carybe and Jorge Amado.(Critical Essay)

The author discusses the significance of Jorge Amado's brief but crucial incursion into the world of children's literature: his O Gato Malhado e a Andorinha Sinha (about a tabby cat and a young lady swallow). This adventure from the pen of the Brazilian author resonates not only in the area of textual genesis in this literary field, or that of illustration, but also in the area of childhood culture, a world which may perhaps be marginal and is only just beginning to claim a place in Portuguese universities. This little work by Jorge Amado is presented as an extremely rich source for the definition of a paradigm that respects the needs of text, illustrations and childhood culture.

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Writing for children is a difficult genre. Though they do not appear so, they are more demanding readers than the grownups who read our novels and essays. To satisfy those adult readers we just need to recount the lives and day-to-day reality of people and places or put some message across. We do not have to go beyond the realm of the real. But children demand more: they demand imagination.

This passage by Jorge Amado appeared in an article entitled 'Livros para criancas' 13 years before he wrote O Gato Malhado e a Andorinha Sinha.

The brief but crucial incursion of a writer like Jorge Amado into the world of children's literature seems a sufficient reason for presenting here the story of this tabby cat and young lady swallow. This adventure from the pen of the Brazilian author eventually resonates not only in the area of textual genesis in this literary field, or that of illustration, but also in the area of childhood culture, a world which may perhaps be marginal and is only just beginning to claim a place in Portuguese universities. This little work by Jorge Amado can become an extremely rich source for the definition of a paradigm that respects the needs of text, illustrations and childhood culture.

The significance of O Gato Malhado e a Andorinha Sinha finds a faint echo in our school curricula, which help to give it recognition by including it in the official list of texts offered for Portuguese, along with suggestions for reading models that, in my view, are very inferior to what the text might potentially allow one to achieve with such a rich narrative.

The love story of the swallow Sinha (young lady) and her cat Malhado (a tabby) has much to tell us about:

1. the very definition of children's literature, a definition that must take account of the editorial problem;

2. the themes and creation of an imaginary that is heir to traditional oral literature, which also depends on a more complex code in addition to the linguistic code;

3. the 'storyteller's role' and the genesis of a story for telling.

The first big problem in relation to this work concerns its origin, which the author himself relates in a preliminary explanation. The paratext manages (unconsciously, we may think) to situate the text as a literary genre by …