My First Atlas

Abstract

Initially, when I was invited to write this essay, I thought about discussing the maps produced by XVI Century European navigators, which showed ‘Terra Brasilis,’ as Brazil was called during the period of Portuguese colonization, to the world for the first time. But, as I reflected on the importance of this text and the special edition of the International Journal of Cartography, I decided it would be much more appropriate to comment on map production in Brazil, something very much in line with my own academic experience. I have been a professor of School Cartography, among other university courses, for a little over 10 years, and before that, I was a Geography teacher at the primary and middle school levels for 19 years. During the period that I worked in basic education, I undertook my Master’s and Doctorate degree programs, which were always linked to the teaching of cartography, especially tactile cartography. When I was a teacher, I always worked with the most varied kinds of school maps and Atlases. This contextualization is important, because the work I have chosen, which is much more than a map, is part of my background as a teacher, both at school and at university, as it addresses the teaching of cartography as an essential element in the development of spatial thinking among children and young people. Accordingly, I chose ‘My First Atlas,’ a publication of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), as it was a work that captivated me for the care and the meticulous manner in which it presents the elements of the map, the production techniques and the choice of each representation (Figure 1). The IBGE, organizer of the work, is a Brazilian federal government entity. It was founded on 2 January 1938, replacing the National Institute of Statistics. Nowadays, its institutional mission is ‘to portray Brazil by providing the information required to the understanding of its reality and the exercise of citizenship,’ (IBGE, 2021) and today it is the main source of data and information on Brazil, responsible for the national census, economic surveys, geodesic data and the production of the topographical and thematic maps. Published in 2005, ‘My First Atlas’ is now in its fourth edition; it has 148 pages and it is divided into two parts, the first called ‘Constructing and Understanding Maps’, which teaches children the basics of cartography, and the second called simply ‘Maps,’ (Figure 2) which is similar to a traditional school Atlas.