América, written by Coelho Netto and published in 1897 by Editora Bevilacqua & C., was probably the first civic book in prose fiction written by a Brazilian author. Following the model that became notorious with the extraordinary success of Heart, by Edmondo de Amicis, América did not achieve in Brazil a comparable fame with the Italian novel neither with other Brazilian civic books such as Através do Brasil, for example. This article discusses some of the main topics of the book and analyses features that enable us to read América as a kind of republican utopia for children.
education; civism; nationalism; children's literature; Coelho Netto