How did the Yellow Woodpecker Farm doll come about?

In 2024, Emília, the rag doll that stars in the literary series “Sítio do Pica-Pau Amarelo”, will be 104 years old! Chatty, playful, stubborn, smart and always very independent, the character that debuted in the pages also starred in animations and live-action productions on the small and big screens, thus allowing the century-old legacy that forever marked Brazilian literature to be adapted to other formats and reach even more people.

Also known as the Marquise of Rabicó and the Countess of Three Little Stars, Emília was part of the childhood of several generations. But do you remember how the character was created? Thinking about answering the question, RECREIO researched and gathered the main information about the origin of the character below; check it out!

How did Emilia come about?

Fruit of the imagination of the Brazilian author Monteiro Lobato (1882-1948), Emília was written in São Paulo, at Rua Boa Vista 52, sometime in 1920, as explained in “Emília: an unauthorized biography of the Marquise of Rabicó” (2014), by Help Acioliwhich, despite the title, was approved by the family of Lobatoas reported by the portal O Globo.

In that year and place, the book “A Menina do Narizinho Arrebitado” (1920), a plot later released with the title “Reinações de Narizinho” (1931), took shape and, with it, Emília emerged, a character who in fiction appeared as a common rag doll, after all, Aunt Nastácia was the one who made her, using an old skirt stuffed with macela flowers — the Brazilian chamomile — for Narizinho, Dona Benta’s granddaughter, so that the girl would not feel alone during the days spent at Sítio.

However, just like Pinocchio, a character that appeared in 1883 through the author’s creativity Carlo Collodi In the novel “The Adventures of Pinocchio”, Emilia’s fate changed when her owner wished for her to have human characteristics. In the case of the doll, Narizinho wanted her to talk!

It turns out that, tired of talking to the toy and never hearing any response, the girl with the upturned nose decided to take her to Doctor Snail in the Kingdom of Clear Waters, where he prescribed a talking pill for Emília that made her say the first sentence since she was created: “What a horrible taste of frog in my mouth!”. Since then, she has never stopped talking.

Emília started out as an ugly rag doll, the kind that cost 200 réis in small grocery stores in the countryside. But she quickly evolved, and evolved like a goat — a young goat — with kicks. Biological theory of mutations. And she acquired such independence that, I don’t know in which book, when someone asked her: But who are you, after all, Emília? she answered with her chin up: I am Independence or Death!”, wrote Lobato in a letter dated February 1, 1943, obtained by professor Osni Lourenço Cruz, a researcher into the writer’s life and work (via Lobato com Você).

In addition to the place of creation and the story that gave rise to the talking doll, the blog Lobato com Você, managed by Cleo Monteiro Lobatogreat-granddaughter of Emília’s creator, and Ricardo Aguiar, journalist and editor, there is a quote from the writer Carmo Chagas in the book “Os Oliveira Costa de Taubaté” which reveals a possible inspiring muse for the character’s name.

The excerpt, treated as speculation, says: “In the house of Antonieta Bernardes, a great friend of Maria Eudoxia, a black girl called Emília worked, who in childhood was a playmate of Monteiro Lobato’s children and, it was said in Taubaté, gave her name to the devilish talking doll.”

With allusions to real-world experiences or not, it is a fact that Emília became a great figure in Brazilian children’s literature, even earning solo stories such as “Emília no País da Gramática” (1934), “Aritmética da Emília” (1935) and “Memórias de Emília” (1936), where the character’s biography is written from the perspective of another character from “Sítio do Pica-Pau Amarelo”: Visconde de Sabugosa.

More than that, Emília can also be seen in animated format in “Sítio do Pica-Pau Amarelo”, released by Rede Globo in 2013, and in versions in which real actresses give life to the character, as in the only adaptation of the work by Lobato which premiered in theaters: “O Saci”, released in 1951, where the character is played by Olga Mariaand in TV adaptations, such as the one from 1970, which became the small screen version with the largest number of episodes, accumulating 1,436 chapters, and the one from 2001, which features Isabelle Drummond on the doll’s skin.

It is worth mentioning that the most recent of all the adaptations is “O Pica-Pau Amarelo”, a series from SBT that will feature the actress Lindaines Deterling as Emília. The new production will have 15 episodes that will be available on the broadcaster’s streaming service in August, and in October on open TV, but RECREIO was already able to meet the characters on an incredible visit to Sítio; see: