The Yellow Woodpecker Ranch (Sítio do Picapau Amarelo) is the setting for the children’s books written by Brazilian writer Monteiro Lobato. It is a small farm with a pretty cottage, surrounded by trees and simultaneously close to several other subsettings: the river, the woods, and a small village nearby.

In the ranch lives an old widow, Dona Benta ("Mrs. Benta”), and her two grandchildren, a girl, Lúcia (“Lucy”) that is always referred only by her nickname, Narizinho (“Little Nose”, because she had the turned-up nose), and a boy, Pedrinho (“Pete”), the servant and cook, a black woman named Nastácia (“Anastasia”), and two talking puppets, the rag doll Emília (“Emily”) (animated by some of Doctor Snail’s “Talking Pills” she somehow “ingested”) and the aristocratic and learned puppet made of corncob Visconde de Sabugosa (“Viscount Corncob”) (sabugo means corncob in Portuguese). In the ranch lives also various animals, the fat pig Rabicó (“Short-Tail”) the cow Mocha, the learned donkey Conselheiro (“Counselor”), and the Pacific rhinoceros Quindim (“Candy”).

While in the ranch the children have a lot of adventures, with or without the participation of the old widow, get to know many strange creatures, like the noble fish Príncipe Escamado (“Scabby Prince”), the vain sardine Miss Sardine, the fretful cockroach Dona Carochinha (“Mrs. Carochinha”) and the old snail Doutor Caramujo (“Doctor Snail”); and entities from the Brazilian folklore, like the witch alligator Cuca (an evil monster invoked by Brazilian mothers at night to convince their kids to go to bed), the Saci (an one-legged elf), or Iara (some sort of river mermaid).

The Ranch was devised as an attempt to sum up all widespread characteristics of the Brazilian rural way-of-life of its time for educational purposes: Lobato intended to teach children to understand, to enjoy and to be proud of their cultural heritage and tried to do so by means of creating an entire milieu in which to set his 

    Lucía, Visconde de Sabugosa,
Nazarinho and Pedrinho

children’s stories so that they could all have a common Brazilian feel and background.

The major features of the Ranch were established by the book A Menina do Narizinho Arrebitado (“The Girl With the Turned Up Nose”), in 1920.