Erico Veríssimo e a Biblioteca de Nanquinote: um projeto para a “petizada” brasileira (1936-1949)

Abstract

This study examines the aspects that contributed to the conformation of the Biblioteca de Nanquinote, a collection of children's books by Livraria e Editora do Globo, conceived by Erico Veríssimo. Questions about Erico Veríssimo's performance as an intellectual mediator of reading are focused, as well as about the dissemination and criticism of the Biblioteca de Nanquinote, published in periodicals from different Brazilian regions. It also examines the content of Veríssimo's stories for the collection and how these works contributed to a cultural and pedagogical project by the author and the publishing house. Furthermore, the role of Livraria e Editora do Globo as a broadcaster of the stories created by Erico Veríssimo and other authors from Rio Grande do Sul is highlighted in the study. The central hypothesis of this research is that the Biblioteca de Nanquinote collection was a space for non-institutionalized education for young children and, in this sense, we seek to analyze the contributions of the intellectual and novelist Erico Veríssimo to the literature for children in the decades of 1930 and 1940. The time frame focuses on the years 1936 to 1949. The 13-year period selected concerns the formation of the collection in 1936, when the first titles were published and organized in this configuration, and extends to 1949, after the last title was published, and advertisements and news about the works begin to decline. The theoretical analyzes and the methodological approach of the study are anchored in assumptions extracted from the History of the Book, of the Reading and of the Publishing, notably in the researches carried out by Chartier (1990, 1996), with emphasis on the materiality of the printed object and of the protocols of reading, capable of mobilizing the interpretation of readers. Studies related to intellectuals and cultural mediation, such as those based on Sirinelli (1996) and Gomes & Hansen (2016), also proved relevant. Erico Veríssimo's memoirs were used in this study, as they offer clues about the conformation of the Biblioteca de Nanquinote. Furthermore, the examination of marked advertisements is combined with warnings contained in critical texts written by other intellectuals and published in newspapers and magazines. According to the achieved results, the books in the collection written by Erico Veríssimo, on one hand, prescribe literary reading as a form of learning and personal growth and, on the other, are configured as a project by the writer and by Livraria e Editora do Globo itself aimed at spreading reading.