Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers (SBYR) plans to publish a picture book about the Recycled Orchestra of Paraguay. Ada’s Violin: The Story of the Recycled Orchestra of Paraguay will be released on March 15, 2016.
Artist Sally Wern Comport has been brought on to create the illustrations. Writer Susan Hood worked with this musical group (pictured, via) to compose the manuscript. Both the publisher and Hood have pledged to make a donation to the Recycled Orchestra.
Here’s more from the press release: “Profiled on 60 Minutes and in numerous national publications, the orchestra is also the subject of a documentary, The Landfill Harmonic, which will have its world premiere at South by Southwest on March 18, 2015, and its East Coast premiere on March 21, 2015, at the New York Children’s Film Festival. The story unfolds through the eyes of Ada Ríos, a member since the orchestra’s inception, who had long dreamed of playing an instrument. In her small, poor town built on a landfill, doing so was never an option, until a local engineer, Favio Chávez, had an ingenious idea: What if he turned some of the garbage—the town’s only resource—into instruments? Using scraps of dirty oilcans, jars, wood, forks, and other junk in the Cateura landfill, he and other locals built beautiful musical instruments—violins, flutes, cellos, drums…all made from trash.”