Charcoal Boys

From Hans Christian Andersen Award and Batchelder Honor Medal-winning author Roger Mello, a poetic and sensitive portrait of child labor in Brazil's charcoal mines.

Beautifully illustrated by Roger Mello with sophisticated, highly textural paper cutouts, Charcoal Boys 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.

Winner of the 2014 Hans Christian Andersen Award, Roger Mello has illustrated over 100 titles--22 of which he also wrote--and his unique style and adroit sense of color continues to push the boundaries of children's book illustration. Rather than relying on written narrative to tell the story, he invites his young readers to fill the gaps with imagination. Mello has won numerous awards for writing and illustration, including three Brazilian section of IBBY's Luís Jardim Awards, nine Concours Best Illustration Awards, and the Best Children's Book 2002 International Award. About the translator: Daniel Hahn is the author of a number of works of non-fiction. He is the editor of The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature and one of the editors of The Ultimate Book Guide, a series of reading guides for children and teenagers. His translation of The Book of Chameleons by José Eduardo Agualusa won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2007. He has also translated the work of José Luís Peixoto, Philippe Claudel, María Dueñas, José Saramago, Eduardo Halfon, Gonçalo M. Tavares and others. In 2017 Hahn won the International Dublin Literary Award for his translation of José Eduardo Agualusa's A General Theory of Oblivion.

Winner of the 2014 Hans Christian Andersen Award, Roger Mello has illustrated over 100 titles--22 of which he also wrote--and his unique style and adroit sense of color continues to push the boundaries of children's book illustration. Rather than relying on written narrative to tell the story, he invites his young readers to fill the gaps with imagination. Mello has won numerous awards for writing and illustration, including three Brazilian section of IBBY's Luís Jardim Awards, nine Concours Best Illustration Awards, and the Best Children's Book 2002 International Award.