Charcoal Boys introduces the reader to the world of child labour in Brazil through the eyes of a hornet trying to meet the needs of his family by finding water and shelter. I found the story quite hard to follow, perhaps something was lost in the translation from the original Spanish. In contrast, I liked the illustrations with their silhouette style and occasional flash of colour.

I received an eARC of this book from the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I really didn't get this one. Part of that may be that the illustrations didn't come through in the download, but I just never understood what was actually happening, how the wasp's story intertwined with the people it was observing.

Interesting story, but only because I had to do my own research to know what the author was talking about! Maybe it's the translation. What age group is it meant for? Kids? Adults? Not nearly enough info on anything. I thought maybe the collage illustrations would be better and was disappointed by those as well. I think the book needs to be reworked with more info on why anyone should care about the boys in the book. maybe a better translation, too.

I'm not really sure what to say about this book, other than to say I found it quite odd. The story wasn't really much of a story and was written in quite an unusual way, which made it difficult to follow what was going on. That said, I loved the illustrations. I loved the simple colours and shapes and felt that they enhanced my understanding of what was going on when the text stopped making sense. This book has also highlighted a practice that I was previously unaware of and while it doesn't really tell me much, it has prompted me to find out more.

Visionary, creative, mixed-media montages and almost fantasy-fairy-like story-telling of the very harsh, cruel reality.

Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. All the best to Mr. Mello (and translator Hahn) in future endeavors.

“Beautifully illustrated by Roger Mello with sophisticated, highly textural paper cutouts, <u>Charcoal Boys</u> 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, 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 seen 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 knowledge 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 remain 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 boys 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 are unclear. 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.

If you dismiss the text altogether the artwork is pretty cool.

However, I found it impossible to ignore the words. It was bizarre but in a confusing and unintelligible way that was unpleasant and awkward to read. But.I.Could.Not.Stop.Reading.

This is supposed to be a children's book, but um...no.

Charcoal Boys is a sad tale with some beautiful illustrations. I think this book could work great as a starting point in regards of the topic of child labour.

While the illustrations are highly sophisticated and intriguing, the story thought-provoking, the book seems to be suitable only for older readers. I doubt that the story will be accessible to younger readers.

"Charcoal Boys" introduced me to a side of Brazil I did not know existed. The gorgeous art and unique way of telling the story is, I believe, meant to lead to research and discussion. While it is a picture book, I would recommend it for those eighth grade and up as part of a classroom lesson or independent study. What I've learned because of this will stick with me.

Oh mercy me! What on earth did I just read??

I actually really like collage art. My sister is a collage artist. I was actively hoping this book *would* be on the artsy-fartsy side because then I'd know exactly what to get her next Christmas (yes, I'm really that on top of my Christmas shopping, y'all).

Well, as it turns out, some pages here are just gorgeous, but others really are not at all. The four wordless two-page spreads of the same basic line flame on different coloured backgrounds underwhelms me.

And the story! I struggle to understand the target audience for this story. For children the text is too much. For adults the facts/details are too little. This could have been a really moving story, but most of the time I was just very puzzled. Not a great one for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Steerforth Press for providing me with a DRC of this book.

I'm really not sure how to feel about <i>Charcoal Boys</i> by Roger Mello. As a whole, it really never felt to me as though the author succeeded in telling the story he wanted to tell, but rather that he managed a convoluted mess of a story that only ever really served to be awkward and strange. Even worse, the topic and the way in which it was portrayed is not something I would reasonably picture any child engaging in enough to read, let alone understand the rather dark context behind the story. Ultimately, this is a hard book to appreciate and an even harder book to recommend.

I struggled immensely with my rating for <i>Charcoal Boys</i>, a creative bit of artwork that tells the story of a young boy from Brazil who works in the charcoal mines. For something that is marketed as a children's book and said to condemn child labor, readers really have to dig deep to see this connection. On the surface, where a child's understanding might be, having even the slightest clue as to what the book is about is difficult to achieve. While, on the one hand, there is some merit to the story the author is telling and the uniquely intriguing way in which he tells it, much of that merit is hidden away as a result of the strange narrator, the unfortunately involved descriptions, and the fact that nothing is presented in a way that a young reader might reasonably get without a <i>lot </i>of context provided by their parents.

And this is not to say that's a terrible thing, since I do believe the subject matter is incredibly important and I would rather have my children educated on a wide variety of subjects with the opportunity to learn about more--and opportunity arrives largely with accessibility--but it does make the book as a whole rather difficult to fully appreciate. Also, the wasp's role in the entire story was kind of superfluous and really, in my opinion, took <i>a lot</i> away from the message that the author was trying to send in the end. And that was annoying to me, especially as the wasp was thoroughly unnecessary.

Ultimately, I find <i>Charcoal Boys</i> to be a difficult book to review, though not one that should be counted out entirely, it probably doesn't match the audience it was intended for nor does it effectively convey the message the author set out to send.

<i>I was provided a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.</i>

What an utter waste of time. This is one of those pretentious picture books that's only going to appeal to graduate students who want to prove how smart they are.

This is not a "moving condemnation of child labor". This is an author trying to look clever. The story, such as it is, is told from the point of view of a hornet, who apparently hasn't bothered to learn how to correctly use grammar. The sentence fragments were driving me to distraction! Anyway, this hornet tells the story of a boy and his albino friend who work for the coal mines. There are some plot points about the boys starting a brush fire with a cigarette, the boy stowing away on a truck to go and see a steel mill (which is still narrated by the hornet, even though it couldn't possibly have known what the boy saw), the albino kid and his mother being taken away, a lost key (which is never explained)... and the hornet finally killing the boy with a sting.

What the...?!

I was interested in reading this because I thought it would be an interesting look into child labour or coal mines in Brazil. Instead, all I got was a pretentious story told by a child-killing hornet.

I'd encountered Roger Mello's illustration work before. I wasn't that crazy about it. I don't really like it here, either. The collages sort of fit with the text, but since the text is so weak, I can't really get excited about the illustrations. I doubt kids would find much to enjoy about them, either.

Actually, I doubt kids would enjoy this book at all. It's too heavy on the text, there's no story to speak of (and what's there is so sparse and littered with unanswered questions that it's not going to be very satisfying), and the supposed subject matter is barely even addressed. If you really want to read a book about the misery some children face, I'd recommend a book like Michel Chikwanine's graphic novel memoir, Child Soldier, instead.

While this book contains the most beautiful artwork i've ever seen, I found the narrative a little too 'high concept' for a children's book. It was a difficult read in terms of engagement for me as an adult so I'm not certain many children would be able to take to it.
It's a shame as I really did want to enjoy it.

I did not expect the point of view from this story on child labor to be a wasp. I actually ended up learning more about the wasp and feeling more for the wasp than the boys. There was a disconnect between the stated goal of this story and the actuality. The art, however, was beautiful and captivating. This book may have been more impactful with fewer words, fewer wasps and larger pictures.