"Nobody has received more prizes than me. Letters of children comes of all part (yesterday I received one from Fé Saint, in Argentina), making me the richest man in Brazil - the great millionaire."

This phrase is of Monteiro Lobato, a Brazilian writer who died on the 50ties, but that continues being loved for children in Brazil. Here in the Brazilkids you can more know a little on his work, clicking here.

For years, children read books of Lobato and on when he was alive, they wrote him. Now, a research of a Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) Teacher, Eliane Santana, rescued an example of this contact between children and this great writer.

She studied letters changed between a little boy, Gilson Maurity Saints, in the decade of 30, when he was eleven years old. In 1999, she found him, now with almost 80 years old.
Gilson wrote five letters on 30ies to Lobato when he was a child; and some more later, when he graduated himself as a doctor and had the dream of becoming a writer: Lobato world was so fantastic and fascinating for children that many of them, as Gilson boy, wanted to visit the magical world of the Yellow Woodpecker Farm: "I now want to go for Yellow Woodpecker Farm to put me in Adventures." Or then: "I want that you answer me if you will leave me or not me to enter in the adventures "

Lobato answered almost all children letters and answered all of Gilson. Many of the children wanted the same as Gilson: to participate of histories. Thus, in 1939, finnaly several of the names of boys who used to wrote to Lobato appeared in one of the histories, visiting Yellow Woodpecker Farm.
Today, quite an old man, Gilson affirms that Lobato´s influence when he was a child reflected positively on all his adult life: "in my character and all the ethic that had guided me for all my life".

So, and you? Do you have the wish to write and talk a little to some writer or artist that you really admires? Do it!

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