Page 84 - Master with TOC not embedded

and one child’ non-fiction book (Raphus) and the skills of

writing a children’s story are completely different. But who

else was to write it? To commission the story I wanted, I

knew I would never receive exactly how I wanted it. The

next problem I was faced with, was not only writing it but

facing Nellie Coelho with a manuscript that I had written

and I was paying her a fee to select on my behalf. Perhaps

you can now see the problems I faced and the nepotism it

may generate?

My idea was to tell the story of Pele’s life from his birth in

the small town of Three Hearts (Tres Corocão) to the time

he was selected by Santos Football Club at the age of 15.

He played for the national side soon after. The story was

to be a simplified biography told in such a way as to focus

on the 7 to 11-year-old boy. One of the local São Paulo

daily newspapers was called the Folio to São Paulo a huge

circulation of both the morning and evening editions. My

own editor arranged for me to visit the archives of the

newspaper in downtown São Paulo, and they were

exceedingly kind and courteous in allowing me three days

completely unsupervised in the rooms allocated only to

the material on Pele’s life. The material content focused

after his joining the Santos team and the story as a

schoolboy with his family was extremely limited. But it was

sufficient for me to gather the information I required. I left

82