Text: Itamar Assumpção | Paintings: Dalton Paula

“Whoever wants to get home soon
Don’t walk with a tortoise Because tortoises are not in a hurry.
They just don’t care.”

In the second book of the collection Itamar para Crianças (Itamar for children), the composer, singer and instrumentalist Itamar Assumpção plays with the tortoises and with the funniest suppositions: what if the animal played the saxophone? Or drums? What if it paraded during Carnival? What if someone thought of taking the tortoise to churchor to school?

With the well-thought-out rhymes and images that are characteristic of his songs, Itamar one again comes close to the universe of children through his enchantment with animals. O Jabuti não tá Nem aí is a book about animals, of course, but it is also about respect for nature and the desire for peace. The book was illustrated by Dalton Paula, a famous Brazilian visual artist who investigates the influence of the African diaspora in the culture and history, and who is a fan of Itamar. The text was edited by the poet Alice Ruiz S, a long-time friend and collaborator of the author.

The authors

The Authors

Itamar Assumpção (by Anelis Assumpção). He was born on September 13, 1949, in the city of Tietê, in the countryside of São Paulo, he passed away on June 12, 2003. A singer, composer, instrumentalist, actor, producer, and also a writer, although he considered himself simply a "non-poet". He produced a valuable body of work: over 300 songs, 9 albums, and hundreds of poems. Since 2020, his rich archive has been housed in the virtual museum dedicated to him, MU.ITA. Between 1998 and 2003, Itamar dedicated himself to a collection of children's books, which remained unpublished until 2021, when we published Homem-Bicho, bicho-Homem [Man-Animal, Animal-Man]. Restless in his art and dedicated to the study of the word, Ita decided to delve into children's language and devoted himself deeply to the creation of these works. He was also famous for his passion for nature, flowers, plants, and animals. With these books, he provides a beautiful encounter between word and memory, which flow into a creative river, full of tongue twisters that unlock thought.

Dalton Paula. I was born in Brasília in 1982, and I currently live in Goiânia. I work as an educator and visual artist. I like to create paintings, photographs, sculptures, and installations, and, above all, to investigate the influences of the Black diaspora on Brazilian history. My works have been exhibited in museums such as MASP and Instituto Tomie Ohtake, and at art events like the São Paulo Biennial, the New Museum Triennial in New York, and the Mercosul Biennial. When I was invited to illustrate the unpublished books by Itamar, of whom I am a fan, I felt the call of ancestry. It made me very happy to have the opportunity to be part of a work by this artist, who did so much for our culture.

Technical Information: