The Big House - Citizenship Manifesto

In "A Casa Grande" (The Big House), João Manuel Ribeiro presents us with a Manifesto for Citizenship. He addresses multifaceted themes such as different languages, latitudes, cultures, colours, and religious beliefs. The writer appeals to young readers and "(still) [...] true children" to practice and share feelings such as love, truth, and forgiveness. He invites them to participate in this challenge: the struggle to achieve a universal language, new and common to all who respect difference. "A Casa Grande" is a metaphorical album where one can learn to be a capital citizen who dreams without fear of aging and lives intensely. Ricardo Rodrigues' illustrations, in a particularly successful way, recreate the key moments of the text, as well as contemplating aspects that the verbal component does not include, enriching it. To achieve this, the illustrator uses a plastic language with constant recourse to strong and contrasting colours, collage (albeit subtle) for the simulation of clothing patterns, in association with the different points of view that can be read on each page as well as in their sequential reading. The result is a book of fluid enjoyment, rich in diverse chromatic and formal information, yet organised in an expressive, varied, and balanced way, an aspect to which the design and graphic choices of the publication greatly contributed.