What are ideas?

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When I lived in Chad—in the early seventies—I saw a strong Chadian man on his way home from a day's work. He was pulling a huge trailer—he had no truck--he was just pulling the trailer with his strong arms and legs. In the empty trailer was one mango. It rolled back and forth. I thought, "Maybe that will be his reward after a hard day of work." I also thought that someday, a story about the mango rain, the fruit and transportation in Chad would make a wonderful little children's story. I had no intention of becoming a children's book author, but the idea of the mango in the truck bed and the mango rain appealed to me. These ideas lay dormant until I found myself a children's book author—quite by accident—in 1996 after a retired librarian named Harriett Oberhaus challenged me to write and illustrate a book for children. I accepted the challenge and sent Houghton Mifflin my first manuscript called "The Cloudmakers." Soon after that I revisited the idea that first came to me in Africa so many years ago.

I sent my manuscript with the pictures to my editors. None was interested. Not wanting to give up, I decided to send my story to Brinque-Book in São Paulo, Brazil, a publishing house that had just come out with a Portuguese translation of my Nine Animals and the Well. I knew some Portuguese; so I sent them the mansucript in Portuguese. and they agreed to publish my book. Several months later, they wrote wanting the English translation. Reluctantly—because I wanted to be the author in Portuguese—I sent them the English version with a note saying that, even though my Portuguese was faulty, I'd like them to work with my translation. A few days later an email arrived telling me not to worry. "Your Portuguese," they wrote, " is better than your English!"

And so, my story about a Chadian boy and the mango rain appeared with the title A Chuva de Manga. The book was well received and was honored by the Fundação Nacional do Livro Infantil e Juvenil (National Foundation of Books for Children and Young Adults). Soon the book became part of the curriculum in most Brazilian schools. Brinque-Book also thought enough of the book to send it to Denmark as one of the official entries from Brazil for the Hans Christian Andersen Award!

How I did the illustrations for this book and for Rain School:
I started by inking the sketch I had made in pencil. Then I put a wash of yellow watercolor over the background and a wash of purple over the skin. When the wash was dry, I colored my illustration with pastels and sprayed it with fixative to bring out the inked lines.

Este é um conto sobre uma pequena chuva, uma manguiera em flôr e o poder de imaginação. É contado nas palavras e cores ricas que transporteram você a uma aldeia pequena no país africano do Chade. Lá você vai sentir o calor, saborear a chuva refresca de manga e encontrar um rapaz chamado Tomás.

Quando morei no Tchad—nos anos 70—eu vi um chadiano puxando um reboque gigante. Não tinha uma camionete. Puxava o reboque usando somente seus braços et suas pernas fortes. No reboque não havia nada—salvo uma manga que rolava de cá para lá. Pensei: "Talvez a manga seja para o seu almoço." Imaginei também que aquela cena poderia se tornar num história para crianças, um conto do Tchad, da sua gente corajosa e da suas mangas. Mas não tinha nenhuma intenção de escrever livros. Minhas ideas ficaram adormecidas. Muito mais tarde, completamente por acaso, eu me tornei escritor em 1996, quando uma bibliotecária, chamadaHarriett Oberhaus me desafiou a escrever e a ilustrar um livro infantil. Aceitei o seu desafio e escrevi "The Cloudmakers," meu primeiro livro. Agora, depoís de muitos livros, tenho retornado á idéa que me fascinou na África há tantos anos.