A Portrait of Photographer
Sebastião Salgado
A TRUE TALE WITH A CHERRY ON TOP
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
(Simon & Schuster)
(pub. 3.5.2024)
48 pages
Ages 6 - 9
Author: Philip Hoelzel
Illustrator: Renato Alarcão
Character: Sebastião Salgado
Overview:
" As a young boy, Sebastião Salgado loved exploring his parents’ farm in the forests of Brazil, always dreaming of what might lie beyond his view. When he went away to school, he met Lélia, who showed him how to use a camera. As he looked through the lens, Sebastião realized he could use photography to capture how the world fits together.
Sebastião used his pictures to tell the stories of people who might not otherwise be seen. But after witnessing too much destruction, he put away his camera and returned to his childhood home. The land was in ruins.
So Sebastião and Lélia decided to rebuild the rainforest and photograph the beauty of the world to save it. Through art and activism, they would show that everyone was responsible for caring for the planet and that hope endures if we take action."
Tantalizing taste:
"But when Sebastião and Lélia arrived [back at his childhood farm in Brazil], the land was in ruins.
Brazilwood, ironwood, and peroba trees that held water in the soil and provided shade on hot, sunny days had been cut down for lumber. The soft forest soils were wearing away. The ocelots, anteaters, and colorful birds were gone...
Lélia cried to see the sickness of the land.
Sebastião wept over the destruction of his childhood paradise.
Then Lelia thought of something that gave her hope...'Let's rebuild your beautiful world. Let's plant the rainforest that was here before'."
And something more: The section, Instituto Terra - The Environmental Education Center in Aimorés, Brazil explains: "When Sebastião and Lélia created Instituto Terra, their first project was to replant about seven hundred soccer fields' worth of native trees on Sebastião's boyhood farm... Today they have grown more than four million seedlings. Many of these seedlings have been used on projects that have helped save seventeen thousand acres of land (approximately eleven thousand soccer fields) in the Rio Doce river valley near Sebastião's boyhood home."
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