This beautiful but troubling picture-book from award-winning Brazilian artist Roger Mello examines the subject of child labor. Told from the perspective of a hovering hornet, the tale here involves a young boy working in a charcoal-making yard, and details (in a round-about way) the grim hardships he and his albino friend face. During the course of the book there is a brush fire started by one of the boy's cigarettes, a trip to a steel factory, the arrest (one assumes?) of the albino friend and his mother, and the (possible?) death of the boy, after the hornet stings him...

Originally published as Carvoeirinhos, this is the second of Roger Mello's own picture-books, following upon You Can't Be Too Careful, to be translated into English by Daniel Hahn, for the Brooklyn-based Elsewhere Editions. It is a remarkably difficult book to describe, with a challenging, open-ended narrative, and powerful artwork that is sometimes lovely and sometimes repellent. The text is fractured, jumping about in a way that suggests the hornet's own flight, from place to place, and topic to topic. There's quite a bit of reading between the lines that is required, something that might prove difficult for readers (whether young or old) who lack the cultural context to supply the missing ideas and information. North American children, in particular, might require quite a bit of explanation in order to make anything of the tale here. The artwork is done in collage on some pages, with cut-out paper on others. The spread depicting the fire, with the different colored paper in various flame-like cut-outs, was particularly striking.

I found Charcoal Boys fascinating, and sometimes beautiful, but I'm honestly not sure whether I enjoyed it. I'm also not sure that I'd particularly recommend it, other than to those interested in Mello's work, or in Brazilian children's literature. I recall attending a children's literature conference once, where one of the presenters gave a paper on Mello, and I have had a great interest in his work ever since. That said, even the presenter acknowledged that his books are often more popular with educators and librarians, than with children themselves. ( )

“Beautifully illustrated by Roger Mello with sophisticated, highly textural paper cutouts, Charcoal Boys follows a young boy working in Brazil's charcoal mines. The boy's strength and resilience shine through the darkness in this moving condemnation of child labor.”

So reads the blurb that prompted me to request a digital copy of Roger Mello’s unusual, longer-than-typical picture book. Like many blurbs, it could have been talking about an entirely different book. “Beautifully illustrated”? Perhaps. Interestingly illustrated for sure. A “boy’s strength and resilience [that] shine through the darkness”? A “moving condemnation of child labor”? Hmm. I must have missed something—or a lot.

Roger Mello is an award-winning Brazilian artist, who (according to the afterword) has illustrated a hundred picture books, twenty-two of which he also wrote the text for. Based on what I’ve read here, Mello should stick to illustration. Charcoal Boys is pretty highbrow, arty stuff. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I just wish there’d been a decent story. I wonder if the book might go over better in Mello’s native Brazil, where kids (and adults) are more likely to have the cultural context to make sense of this strange (I could go so far as to say “bizarre”) tale. I also wonder if the problems I identify are a “translation thing”. I don’t know any Portuguese, so I have no way of judging the adequacy and faithfulness of David Hahn’s English translation. What I can say is that the syntax is occasionally odd—“Other ovens ready sooner are letting out smoke” while the diction is regularly so—“The day startled Albi’s [a boy’s] house indoors.” (Note: these are not typos.) At times, the author’s words read like those of someone in a hallucinatory state—tripping on psychedelics, say. Take this, for example: “Wings know nothing about feet when feet touch the water.” (Those are the narrator’s opening words.) Or this: “Have I told you that hornet’s wings aren’t goofy wings like ladybug wings?” (I guess you have to be an insect to appreciate that kind of distinction, but maybe kids might like these whimsical asides more than I think.)

Mello’s story is narrated by a philosophical hornet whose survival instincts are still intact. This hornet thoughtfully watches a boy who labours in a Brazilian charcoal-production camp, but the insect is also committed to meeting its own needs and those of its offspring, a “hornet boy”—that is, an egg which is working on becoming a larva inside a nearby saliva-and-mud nest. The adult hornet first meets the human boy over a sink, where both come to drink. After this, the hornet comments (obliquely and confusingly) on the boy’s work. It reports opaque snippets of the boy’s conversation with the cook’s son, whom the hornet describes as “albino”(but maybe the kid is actually Caucasian). It describes the two kids tussling over a cigarette, whose burning tip sets scrubland on fire, which in turn makes life difficult for other creatures. In time, the hornet tells of an “inspector” arriving—from where and for what purpose, who knows? Alarmed, the boy hides on a charcoal truck about to leave for the steel works. Just before the vehicle pulls away, the boy’s albino friend presents him with a cigarette box with something inside, a surprise . . . Ultimately, the boy will travel back to the camp, and have a fateful encounter with the hornet. Where exactly the indictment of child labour comes in eludes me. (The hornet does conclude that there’s something wrong with humans: “Why is it these people don’t fly?” I guess the reader has to milk that metaphor for all it’s worth.) More happens, of course. I could tell you, but the story still wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense—in my opinion, anyway.

Even with a lot of “front loading” (as educators call the work of providing students with the necessary background information to approach a challenging text or task) there’s a lot to grapple with here. I’m not sure many North American kids know about the large illegal charcoal burning industry in the Carajas region of northern Brazil. The South American country has preserved its charcoal-based industries because it has large iron deposits but precious few coal mines. The charcoal is required to produce pig iron, which is then sold to companies around the world, including some in the US. The metal ends up being used by such automobile makers as Ford, GM, Nissan, BMW, and Mercedes. The dangerous labour required to clear rainforests and work the charcoal kilns is performed by poor, uneducated migrants who move from camp to camp. They are essentially slaves. Some of these migrants are children.

Did I know this before reading the book? No, I’m ashamed to say, I did not. Did the book communicate some of these basic details? No, I am rather frustrated to say, it did not. What it did do was provide me with some incentive to do a little research and learn something. There’s that. Unfortunately, though, it’s not enough to make me feel inclined to recommend Mello’s work. The sophisticated art work—with its restrained palette of black, white, grey, and various shades of pink—also isn’t enough to win me over. (Eight pages of line drawings of flames against different background colours weren’t much of a thrill either.)

In concluding, I’ll once again refer to the notes at the back of the book: “Rather than relying on written narrative to tell the story, Mello invites his young readers to fill the gaps with imagination.” Don’t get me wrong: such “invitations” can be wonderful. But what if the gaps are too large, due to the child’s lack of critical background knowledge as well as to (unacceptable) deficiencies in the story? That’s the problem here. I’d certainly be willing to look at Mello’s art again, but I think he needs to leave the story writing to someone else, or, at the very least, provide something other than a hornet’s compound-eyed view. ( )

Os meninos carvoeiros nao conhecem outra vida, a nao ser o trabalho duro nas carvoarias. E a historia de um deles que Roger Mello conta neste livro. Uma historia narrada de forma poetica e original e nao sem esperanca e que traz ainda as expressivas ilustracoes do autor, que captam com sensibilidade e forca a vida cinzenta dos pequenos carvoeiros.