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The Small-dotted Girl
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title: The
small-dotted girl (original: A Menina das Pintinhas) Maria do Rosário Poças published by: Edições Berbequim das Letras® (Sítio do Livro) author:
Edward Sá Carneiro Legge-Bourke Ângela Espinha illustrations: Eva Mina Fernandes typesetting: Paulo S. Resende translation: cover:
published in lisbon
isbn:
vi
november 2020 (first published january 2019) 978‑989-8711-42-7
portuguese national library number:
475747/20
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© Maria do Rosário Poças
All rights reserved, according to the current law. Nonauthorized reproduction, scanning, or transmission, partial or complete, by any means, are not permitted and are subject to copyright law.
published and sold:
www.sitiodolivro.pt publicar@sitiodolivro.pt (+351) 211 932 500
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This book is dedicated to my granddaughter,
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Mariana, the source of my writing inspiration.
Once upon a time, there was a five year old girl
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called Mariana who loved dolls and princesses. She had
a huge collection of dolls, some of them princesses, of all shapes and sizes.
Her bedroom’s walls were decorated with princesses that seemed like they were coming straight
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out of children’s story books, neatly arranged on the bookshelf. Close up, one could see Princess Sofia,
Princess Elsa, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Snow White and the
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seven dwarves and even Ariel, the little mermaid. Mariana was also very fond of small dots. She had
beautiful pink curtains with white dots on her bedroom window.
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Mariana wanted to have a pet, but since she lived in an apartment, she was not allowed to have dogs or cats. She had, however, some colourful pretty small fishes in an aquarium.
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The girl lived in a very beautiful and rich-in-history country town. It was a town with many green spaces,
gardens with lakes, fountains and waterfalls. In town,
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there was also a castle from medieval times. Who knows, if a princess hadn´t lived there?!...
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Mariana used to take one of her favourite dolls to
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school, to play with the other children.
A week after classes started, two black children
from Cape Verde, Jessica and Diogo, showed up at the school. They were cousins and they had many small black
braids and chocolate-coloured skin. Mariana liked those
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children’s skin and hair colour.
It saddened the girl when she used to hear some grownups saying bad things about people with that colour.
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She had heard those people call them blacks and even telling them to go back to their homeland. ‘Mother, why are there people who call those
chocolate-coloured people black?’
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‘It is usual to say that these people’s race is black.
We are white people and we are not white; the Chinese are people’s race is yellow and they are not exactly yellow; the Indians’ race is red and they are not quite red. People who don’t like people of other races are racist and sometimes make very unpleasant comments.’
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Mariana wanted to play with Jessica and Diogo
and decided to ask for a chocolate-coloured doll from grandma Rosário to play with them.
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‘Grandma, I’d like to have a chocolate doll!’
‘A chocolate doll? I didn’t know you were so greedy!’
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‘Ah! Ah Ah! No, grandma! I’d like to have a
chocolate-coloured doll!’
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‘Ah! You want an African doll. So, behave yourself…’
Grandma promised that she would offer her a
chocolate-coloured doll, like the girl asked. The lady was able to get a beautiful African doll, with beautiful small black braids, in a big doll warehouse in Lisbon where
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she had already bought her a Chinese doll. Mariana was overjoyed and named that doll Gina, short for Regina, in honour of a well-known brand of very tasty chocolates.
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Mariana took the doll Gina to school to play with
Jessica and the other girlfriends.
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A month after classes started, Matilda showed up at school after a long stay in hospital. The girl had lost her beautiful hair. Some boys and girls laughed at Matilda for being bald, but, when the teacher explained
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that Matilda’s hair had fallen out because of a treatment
that the girl had done against cancer, all the mocking
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children became silent.
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