Like most teenagers in the world, Joso Montanaro, a teen artist in Brazil likes reading and drawing cartoons. But he is special—his drawings get published.
Montanaro is now drawing cartoons for Folha. Folha is Brazil's newspaper and is known for its cartoons.
Montanaro has already been working at Folha for two years. Each week he draws two, three or four cartoons and sends them to the paper. From those editors choose one for the next day's page. Montanaro draws about the news of the day. Recently he worked on The Wave—a drawing of the tsunami (海啸) that hit Japan. Montanaro also likes to draw cartoons about the funny things that happen in Brazilian politics (政治).
"I like doing political drawings because you can joke about somebody bigger than you," Montanaro says.
Folha's art director Mario Kanno says editors saw something new and different in Montanaro's works. "We brought him in with this idea to show that, yes, young people also read newspapers and can show their ideas on politics," Kanno says.
Montanaro's love for cartoons began when he was only 7 or 8 years old. His dad bought him comics. Montanaro says these books gave him the ideas that got him drawing. "I think those great works have really helped me," he says. "They remind me that I should draw something in my book every day."
