Arkady Gaidar, Janusz Korczak, Lev Kassil, Mark Twain - all these are the names of famous children's writers whose works everyone has read. Their stories and stories are filled with kindness and humanity. What is known about the lives of these writers? Were they as kind and humane as their books?
There was little information about famous children's writers, especially domestic ones, in Soviet times. In anthologies and textbooks there were, of course, biographies of authors, but they were meager, stereotyped and often deceitful. A writer who created moralizing works for children could not have vices or weaknesses.
Today information about this or that famous person is open. We can find out what the popular author was like in his personal life, what he loved, what he suffered from, and how he spent the last days of his life. The biography of the most famous children's writers today, of course, is not without fiction, but much more reliable than thirty or forty years ago.
Below are interesting facts from the life of authors whose works are known to everyone. Or almost everyone. The names of famous children's writers are listed in alphabetical order.
Hans Christian Andersen
Perhaps this is the most famous children's writer. Who hasn't read Andersen's fairy tales? "The Snow Queen", "The Little Mermaid", "Thumbelina", "Wild Swans", "The Ugly Duckling" - everyone remembers the plot of these fairy tales.
The famous writer's childhood was spent in poverty. Andersen's father was a shoemaker, his mother was a shoemaker. The future storyteller was a very receptive and emotional child. Hans's mother appears to have been a kind and considerate woman. She sent her son to a charity school - one of the rare educational institutions at that time in which physical punishment was not practiced. At the age of 14, Hans Christian Andersen went to Copenhagen. He dreamed of becoming famous. As you know, his dream came true.
Agnia Barto
A woman who wrote many poems for children experienced a terrible loss - the death of her own child. Agnia Barto was born in Moscow, in the intelligentsia Jewish family. Since childhood, she studied at a ballet school and graduated from a choreographic school. The poetess's maiden name is Volova. She inherited "Barto" from her first husband, a poet and ornithologist. Son Garik died 4 days before the Great Victory - May 5, 1945.
According to some information, Agnia Barto, although the author of kind children's poems, was not known for her kindness in life. She took an active part in the persecution of Chukovsky’s daughter. Barto’s signature also appeared in a collective letter dedicated to one of Korney Ivanovich’s works, which the censors called “charlatan absurd nonsense.”
Arkady Gaidar
The works of this author used to be present in every home library. As a rule, a brief biographical information was contained in the introduction. However, the truth was not written about the famous children's writer. She was very unsightly.
Those born in the USSR remember such works as “The Blue Cup”, “Chuk and Gek”, “Timur and His Team”. Some of Gaidar's books were included in the school curriculum, many of them were included in the summer literature list. However, Soviet readers knew nothing about the fact that the famous children's writer was a mentally unstable person and a murderer.
Arkady Gaidar began his military career at the age of fourteen. At seventeen he was already leading a regiment. At twenty he was accepted into a special purpose unit and sent to Khakassia. Here he had to find and destroy the white officers who acted under the leadership of Kolchak. Gaidar failed to do this, and therefore he became angry and began to execute ordinary, innocent people. Even active participants in the “Red Terror” were shocked by these actions. Gaidar was removed from office. He spent some time in a psychiatric hospital.
Amadeus Hoffman
What works come to mind first? in the name of this famous children's writer? The list of Hoffmann's books is quite extensive, the most famous are The Golden Pot, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, The Sandman, and Elixirs of Satan. The latest work, however, is not aimed at a children's audience.
Amadeus Hoffmann is the most famous German romantic writer. Several ballets have been created based on his works, and many films have been made. At the same time, Hoffmann, like many of his other colleagues, spent most of his life in poverty. All his attempts to make a living through literature led to poverty. Only in recent years has he managed to improve his financial situation thanks to receiving a small inheritance.
Lev Kassil
The famous Russian children's writer graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow State University. As a third-year student, he suddenly experienced an inevitable craving for literary creativity. First of all, this was expressed in lengthy letters that Kassil regularly sent to his relatives. Each of his messages was about thirty pages long.
The younger brother took the letters to the local editorial office, where they were happily published, about which the author knew nothing for a long time. When he learned that his messages had some artistic value (otherwise they would not have been published in the newspaper), he decided to make money by writing literary works. The most famous book by Lev Kassil is “Conduit and Shvambrania”.
Rudyard Kipling
The parents of the creator of The Jungle Book dreamed that their beloved son would become an officer. Rudyard himself was not against a military career. However, since childhood he suffered from myopia, and therefore had to take up literary creativity. Rudyard wrote short stories while still at military school. His real writing career began after several trips to Asia and the USA as a correspondent.
Janusz Korczak
According to one of the Polish musicians who lived in Warsaw at the end thirties, the writer was an amazingly noble man. For many years, Korczak was engaged in literary work, but during his lifetime he was not considered a prose writer of the first rank. The thing is that his work belonged to a rather specific area.
He wrote only for children and only about children. In his books one can see a deep knowledge of child psychology. But the main thing, perhaps, was not even how Korczak wrote, but how he lived. He devoted every minute to children. The teacher did not change this position even in the last hours of his life.
The writer organized several orphanages, collected donations, and hosted children's radio programs. In 1940, he ended up in the Warsaw ghetto along with his pupils. Korczak could have avoided death. He was a fairly famous person and had the opportunity, with the help of his admirers, to hide on the “Aryan” side. But, of course, he didn't do it. In August 1942, about two hundred children were sent to Treblinka. Korczak chose to stay with his students and die in the gas chamber.
Lewis Carroll
The creator of the famous series of works about the adventures of Alice was born into the family of a priest. Lewis Carroll, in addition, had outstanding mathematical abilities. He received a bachelor's degree, then won a competition to give lectures at an English university. Even when he became a famous writer, he continued to publish scientific works under his own name. Lewis Carroll's real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.
Mark Twain
The American prose writer, as you know, wrote not only for children. His work covers many genres. This is satire, philosophical fiction, and journalism. Mark Twain traveled a lot and spent most of his life working as a correspondent. The writer had an amazing sense of humor, while being a sensitive and romantic person. He fell in love with his future wife at first sight. Olivia became disabled after an injury she received in her youth. Twain took care of her until the end of her life.
Korney Chukovsky
The writer's childhood is known from the autobiographical book The Silver Coat of Arms. Chukovsky's mother was a servant in the house of a wealthy man named Emmanuel Levenson. From him she gave birth in 1882 year of the boy who subsequently became one of the best Soviet children's writers. The father decided to connect his life with a woman of his circle. The future poet and prose writer spent his childhood in Odessa. Here he studied for some time in a gymnasium, which he failed to graduate due to his low origin.
Real name writer - Nikolay Korneychukov. In his metric, like illegitimate, there was no middle name. He later took on a pseudonym and added a fictitious middle name. The writer had four children, three of whom he survived. He dedicated many of his poetic works to his daughter Murochka, who died at the age of 11.
And one more fact from the biography of Korney Chukovsky. His work was highly appreciated by critics and literary figures. He was a State Prize laureate. But like no one else he supported talented fellow writers who found themselves in disgrace, and therefore at the end of his life he acquired many ill-wishers.
If you are not a regular at book sites and festivals, then it may seem that they still haven’t come up with anything better than Nosov, Rybakov and Bulychev for children. Meanwhile, children's literature in Russia is developing well. New books, competitions and authors appear every day. Journalist Lisa Birger chose 10 modern writers whose books can be safely placed on a children's bookshelf.
SERGEY SEDOV
Sergei Sedov is one of those writers who fascinate when meeting in person no less than when meeting with his texts - such a real modern storyteller, a person not tied to space and time, a former teacher and Moscow janitor, whose fairy tales we began to read back in the 80s. X. I can’t count how many times these fairy tales - about the boy Lesha, about the frog Pipa, about kings, about fools - have been forgotten and published over the past thirty years, and still they sound stunningly new. Sedov has a wonderful style of light writing; it seems that everything he touches turns into an exciting game, which is impossible not to join. But the main thing about Sedov is the endless freedom of his imagination, completely childish in spirit, his signature oddity, thanks to which he can allow his heroes to amazingly transform into a vacuum cleaner and a balloon, and in his fairy tales about mothers he allows himself to show a drunkard mother and an indifferent mother . All of these are manifestations of the same touching concern, but in different ways. There was a time when Sedov was published a little more and better, but now, unfortunately, it is not easy to find either his horror stories or his wonderfully funny retelling of ancient Greek myths “Hercules. 12 great feats. An eyewitness account,” not even his New Year’s tale “How Father Frost Was Born,” written in collaboration with Marina Moskvina. Nevertheless, “Tales about Lyosha” are always on sale - Sedov is classic in all respects, causing equal delight among parents and children.
MARIA BERSHADSKAYA
VGIK graduate and screenwriter Maria Bershadskaya, who worked, among other things, on “Sesame Street,” invented and wrote probably the best children’s series in modern Russian literature, the “Big Little Girl” series of books. Her heroine Zhenya is a seven-year-old girl, tall beyond her years (so tall that her mother has to stand on a stool to braid her hair), who, despite her height, remains a small child inside. And each situation from Zhenya’s life is a separate story of growing up and internal growth, be it a story about the death of a loved one, about a school romance, about holidays and losses, about uncomfortable and in its own way tragic situations in which every child can find themselves. It’s a brilliant invention to see in one image how the children’s world combines the extreme and the ordinary, the small and the big, the feeling of absolute insecurity in front of the world and daily victories over its obstacles. This situation of both fairy-tale detachment and realistic empathy, the author’s sympathy for the hero’s big and small sufferings is what makes Bershadskaya’s books so understandable and attractive.
STANISLAV VOSTOKOV
A great lover of animals, Stanislav Vostokov dreamed of following in the footsteps of Gerald Durrell since childhood - he dreamed and did. Already at the age of fifteen, he published his translations from Durrell in the Tashkent newspaper “Pioneer of the East” and, while studying at an art school, painted elephants and cranes. From Tashkent he went to protect nature in Cambodia, and from there he did an internship at the International Conservation Training Center founded by Darrell on the island of Jersey. Afterwards he worked at the Moscow Zoo and at the Research Center for Nature Conservation, and talked about all this in his books. Although we fell in love with Vostokov precisely for the genre of stories about animals (see “Do not feed or tease” about the Moscow Zoo and the book “The Island Dressed in Jersey”), about which he knows how to speak simply, with understanding and sympathy, he has perfectly mastered and other genres, and to date has received every conceivable children's award. For example, for a book of stories about Frosya Korovina, “a real village woman of seven years old” from the village of Papanovo, Vologda region, or a series of airy stories, inspired more by Yuri Koval than by the masters of village prose, stories about the village way of life “Kum to the King”, and about birds and animals that can be seen almost from the window.
ARTHUR GIVARGIZOV
The aesthetic homeland of Arthur Givargizov is Soviet school prose, everything that is dear and beloved, from Nosov to Dragunsky. Only he feels much freer in both plots and language, so that some nervous parents scold him for being uneducational (parents who don’t understand jokes or demand that morality come first in a children’s book are the main enemies of children’s prose). In fact, in light of the achievements of world child psychology, according to which what is important for children should be play, not textbooks, freedom of imagination, not cramming, Givargizov is exactly the writer needed to create an atmosphere of total laughter and fun. He never fails, and although many of his poems and stories seem like jokes or games, their important theme invariably becomes the search for freedom in any given situation, be it conversations with adults, school lessons or long journeys. If you don’t know that the Earth has gravity, you can take off and fly, and if you don’t want to write a dictation, then you can run away into the forest and instead of yourself, slip the teacher a bear and a wolf, so that they, quarreling and copying from each other like real hooligans, diligently deduce “Her voice rang and trembled like a cracked glass bell.”
Givargizov, fortunately, is published uninterruptedly, and all his books are very good - from him alone you can make an excellent home library. But it makes sense for parents not to miss, while they still have it, the book “From Grandfather’s to Children’s,” where linguist Maxim Krongauz discusses the stories and poems of Arthur Givargizov while reading them with his grandchildren.
TAMARA MIKHEEVA
Tamara Mikheeva is a professional children's writer. This means that she is equally good at picture books about animals and teen stories like Dolphin Children. These are invariably kind, invariably bright books, inhabited by wonderful magical creatures. In modern children's prose, Tamara Mikheeva plays the role of the main storyteller: living trees grow in her mountains (“Light Mountains”), magical gnomes live in her forests (“Asha’s Summer”), and her shumsa, the inhabitants of the trees, have become one of the best children’s fiction TV series In general, impeccable stories for children who are just learning to read and love books, and parents who want these books to be only about magic and kindness - it’s as if no other world exists for Mikheeva at all.
MARINA AROMSHTAM
Until the mid-2000s, teacher, psychologist and specialist in children's reading Maria Aromshtam wrote educational books about pedagogy for adults and teaching aids for children starting to read. But since her story “When Angels Rest” won the Cherished Dream Award in 2008, Aromstam has become not only one of our favorite writers, but also the main promoter of children's books. The website “Pampambuk”, invented by her, exists precisely to help parents read books with their children. Over the past ten years, Marina Aromshtam has built up a solid bibliography and has already become a classic of modern literature. Moreover, I would like to use the word “classic” here for the unobtrusive instructiveness of her texts, for which we are accustomed to appreciating the books of our childhood, or better yet, for the freedom of thought and feeling that these books invariably promise. She feels equally confident in different topics and genres, be it a realistic story about school life (“When the angels rest”), a historical story from England of the 14th century (“Lancelot the Cat and the City of Gold. An Old English Story”), fairy tales and myths about the birth of the world (“Once Upon a Time in a New World”) or picture books for children (“Zheludenok”). Whatever she writes, it is always about the therapeutic effect of reading and storytelling - exactly what many ordered.
MARIA BOTEVA
The first book of fairy tales by Maria Boteva “Light ABC. Two Sisters, Two Winds" was published by the publishing house NLO in 2005 - at the same time it received the Triumph Award and was included in the short lists of Debut and Cherished Dream. We didn’t hear about her for quite a long time after that, until she was rediscovered by the KompasGid publishing house, and then it became clear that Boteva is, first of all, an accurate, faithful and attentive writer of teenage life. Two books of her stories, “Ice Cream in Waffle Cups” (2013) and “You Walk on the Carpet” (2016) are some kind of joyful acquisition for any children's library. Because the main theme here is not some exceptional sorrows of teenage life, but, on the contrary, the most recognizable things about it, conversations, feelings, daily experiences. So, in the new book “You Walk on the Carpet,” the main characters drink tea, chatter tongue twisters, hang around doing nothing, but it is this “Summer is boring again, just a piece of melancholy” that becomes an incredibly rich plot for it. It's such a stunning, heartfelt insight into teenage life that it can help even an adult remember what it was like. To imagine why this is so good, just read.
ASIA PETROVA
A graduate of the Sorbonne, a wonderful translator from French, the wife of one of the best contemporary children's poets, Mikhail Yasnov, and, above all, a wonderful children's author. It is proven, if you like, even by literary awards - Petrova has a whole bunch of them, from the first “Kniguru” prize for the collection of stories “Wolves on Parachutes” and the Marshak Prize to the shortlists of “Debut” and “Baby-NOS”. The main thing in Asa Petrova, however, is the ability to speak with a teenager in his language, to immerse himself in the world of his experiences, where literally everything becomes an existential question - from the reluctance to put on leggings to the fear that the grandmother will die. Collection of stories “Wolves on parachutes. Adults Are Silent,” combining stories for middle schoolers and thoughtful and sympathetic prose about teenagers, represents everything beautiful, scary, sad, and absurd that ordinary teenage life is made of.
NINA DASHEVSKAYA
The writer Nina Dashevskaya has already received the Kniguru literary award three times, despite the fact that she published her first story in 2011. A musician by training, she graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in violin and now plays in the orchestra of the Theater. Natalia Sats. And her first books, including “Around Music,” were dedicated to the enormous change that the sound of music can make in the life of a little person. This is generally the main theme of Dashevskaya’s teenage prose - a way out of darkness into light, a magical change that is guaranteed to help get rid of loneliness and unhappiness. A sad boy will become cheerful, a lonely teenager will make friends, a child with ADHD will find understanding, everyone will have a good ending. Considering how simply and joyfully these books are written, it is not surprising that children - and adults too - enjoy them so much.
NATALIA EVDOKIMOVA
In some other world, where fantasy, for example, would not be considered a minor genre in literature, Natalya Evdokimova would become a big literary star - it is difficult to find an author who would feel so free in this topic. Her dystopia "The End of the World" tells about a world that changes entirely from time to time. Its laws are strange, bizarre and sometimes even repressive, but the belief remains that one day some of the worlds will turn out to be the one you invented. The brand new book “Kimka & Company” tells about a boy who flew away from his parents staring at the TV into imaginary worlds, and travels through them, taking his newborn brother with him. And there is also a very simple, piercing intonation “Summer Smells of Salt”, whose teenage heroes break free to summer and the sea from the protracted winter and captivity of high-rise buildings. In general, this is a necessary injection of fantasy from boring and sometimes difficult everyday life - and just very good literature.
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Today we will talk about books by interesting modern authors, many of whom became winners of the “New Children's Book” competition of the ROSMEN publishing house. This is one of the largest Russian competitions in the field of children's and youth literature, held annually by the publishing house. All books are written by Russian authors and are intended for children of primary school age.
1. Anton Soya,
"Masha and Arkasha-tarakasha"
The author of the book - rock producer, poet and prose writer Anton Soya - came up with a very charismatic character who is simply doomed to become a star. A real dandy, the last of the cockroaches named Arcadio Scarafaggio (to his friends just Arkasha) wears dark glasses and checkered shorts, spouts wise sayings, dances salsa and waltz and sings in a Chaliapin bass.
Arkasha is a cockroach with a difficult fate. Left an orphan, he wandered around the world and even lived for a month at a nuclear power plant, gained superpowers and became invisible. But third-grader Masha Kolokolchikova, in whose apartment Arkasha settled, sees him. Thus begins the story of a great friendship, in which there will be cockroach races, philosophical debates, choral singing in music lessons, and even a trip to the future.
Bright and cute illustrations for the fairy tale were drawn by Russian illustrator and animator, winner of the “Image of a Book 2014” award in the category “Best Illustrations for Works for Children and Teenagers” Sergei Gavrilova.
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2. Anna Nikolskaya,
"Suitcase"
Grandmother means a lot in children's lives. And if this grandmother is the great and grandiose Chemodanovna, the children’s life immediately turns into an adventure. The heroes of the book are 9-year-old twins Boris Eduardovich and Olga Eduardovna Prikolsky, a modest boy and an immodest girl. They lived in the city of Bolshie Pupsiki and obeyed their hated nanny Isolda Tikhonovna Kikimorova. Until one Saturday night Avdotya Chemodanovna Svirepova showed up at the house. A woman of colossal size, with a large heart, the size of her feet and jaw; tall, listed in the Guinness Book of Records, with a crimson hairstyle in the shape of a house, announced that she would live with them, and that she was their grandmother. And their great-grandfather is Suitcase. Thus began a new life: with cheesecakes for breakfast, walks through puddles instead of cartoons, and with... flights to Antarctica.
Writer Anna Nikolskaya is the winner of the Sergei Mikhalkov gold medal, the V. Krapivin Prize, the Runet Book Prize, the StartAP Prize, and the Book of the Year: Children's Choice. And “Suitcase” was illustrated by St. Petersburg artist Ekaterina Bauman. The prototype of the graphic image of Suitcase, according to Catherine, was the great Faina Ranevskaya: “Because in her eyes, kindness shines through in any, even the most demonic manifestation, it cannot be hidden.”
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3. Irina Naumova,
"The Boy Thumb and the Kind Stepmother"
When your stepmother is a witch, there is never a dull moment. She can turn anyone into a cat or a frog, and she can also turn you into someone else. This is what happened to the boy Yurik - his stepmother Sveta reduced his size and endowed him with the ability to understand all living beings. Yurik decided to find a new home for himself and went into the forest.
It turned out that looking at the world from the bottom up is very interesting! Dew, shining on the grass, reflects thousands of suns, the bulk of the forest stretches into the sky, the most ordinary stump begins to resemble a medieval castle with many towers and loopholes, and forest animals and insects turn into interesting interlocutors.
Irina Naumova is an artist by training, winner of the first season of the New Children's Book competition. In 2013, her fairy-tale cycle “The Adventures of Mr. Shorttail” was shortlisted for the Baby-NOS award among 10 finalists vying for the title of “Best Children's Book of the Decade.”
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4. Aya EN,
"Fairy tales do not follow the rules"
Writer and physicist Aya EN decided to rewrite the traditional plots of fairy tales and the characters of familiar fairy tale characters. The stepdaughter in these fairy tales is not at all a kind, obedient and reasonable Cinderella, but a capricious Cinderella-Mischief. And her stepmother does not tyrannize her, but adores her. The younger brother is not Ivan Tsarevich at all, but two Ivans at once, two twin brothers. And the wondrous wonder that lives in the royal garden, the wondrous miracle, is not a firebird, but a cold fish.
Being a candidate of physical and mathematical sciences, Aya eN writes new fairy tale plots on a completely scientific basis. The heroes of fairy tales botanist Isaac, Char-byg, barylambda vulgaris, Ferapont Opilkin and readers find themselves in such stories that they quickly learn everything about black holes, Planck’s constant, and the uncertainty principle. And also about what a person consists of, from the point of view of chemistry (namely: it consists of 70% water and also contains a lot of protein, fat, amino acids, and so on to microelements) and what emptiness is, from the point of view of physics. They learn and conclude that the world is complex. But it's very logical. And then they grow up and become geniuses. Just like the author.
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5. Yuri Nikitinsky,
"House of Janitors"
A sentimental story about brave janitors who live in a house with an attic, and each janitor has his own floor. And all because a janitor is a responsible profession. Every day, janitors perform small feats, protect the peace of residents and send letters with good wishes. They also save drowning people and raise money to open a children's hospital and cinema. In the janitor universe, instead of the evil “Wipe your feet,” you can see completely different signs and warning signs that young dreamers can come up with themselves.
The book was illustrated by Evgeny Podkolzin, a theater production designer. “I think it is very important to have both a graphic culture and a color scheme for a children’s book, avoiding excessive brightness and clumsiness. It seems to me that a children’s book should be made very seriously, since the formation of taste occurs very early, from the first letters and pictures accompanying them.”, says the artist.
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6. Yulia Simbirskaya,
“Hello, Tanya!”
Tanya’s two best friends live in one of the usual city high-rises. As usual among best friends, they are completely different. Tanya does homework, goes to visit her friend Seryozha, builds houses from the dissertation folders of one Tanya’s father, eats dried fruit candies from grandmother Vera - the other Tanya, and argues which is “more unhealthy”: raw smoked sausage or chocolate spread. Tanya lives a completely ordinary life as completely ordinary, but not at all boring, third-graders. Two Tanyas have to do a lot of interesting things together: tame a white mouse, launch a starship, visit a lion in the zoo, learn French... But in childhood there are no trifles, and the shortest vacations often turn out to be a lifetime long.
The author of the story is a young writer from Yaroslavl, Yulia Simbirskaya.
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7. Svetlana Lavrova and Olga Kolpakova,
“A ghost is good luck!”
“A Ghost is Fortunately” is a continuation of the book “Bring Back the Brand New Skeleton!”, published by the Rosman publishing house in 2013, and part of a trilogy about the adventures of sisters Sasha and Stasya Sergeeva, little Dasha and Ivan Lapshov and the huge dog Nightmare.
The heroes of the new story decided to take up running seriously during the holidays. The race begins with Matilda, a witch and part-time neighbor of the Lapshov and Sergeev families, who live in an ordinary Ural high-rise building. She is joined by the dog Nightmare, seventh-grader Ivan Lapshov, first-grader Stasya Sergeeva, the grandmother of the Lapshov family, two-year-old Dasha Lapshova and an unknown gentleman in a blue suit. The characters cite witchcraft as the reason for the suddenly awakened craving for a healthy lifestyle, and only in the finale does the true reason for the universal love for running become clear.
The authors Svetlana Lavrova and Olga Kolpakova are winners of many literary prizes and awards; they themselves are on the jury of the International Children's Literary Prize named after. V.P. Krapivina.
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8. Anastasia Orlova,
“I love walking on clouds”
You can get rid of a bad mood with the help of the wind. " The wind flies into one ear, like through an open window, and flies out the other. And the draft carries the bad mood outside. The head becomes empty and light. And the sun shines through it to the very bottom. And in the emptiness, nice new thoughts immediately grow.” This is one of many small stories collected in the book. All the stories are told by a 6-year-old boy - about mom and dad, about his little brother, about summer, the sun, the wind and the sea.
Anastasia Orlova has been writing poetry since early childhood. She is known as a poet, participant in writing workshops and forums, winner of literary competitions and winner of the Delvig Prize. The illustrations for the book were drawn by artist Anahit Gardyan.
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9. Elena Yavetskaya, Igor Zhukov,
“Bopsy! Dopsy! Poom!”
A New Year's story about a girl Nina and her friend, the plush monkey Dusya. Nina and Dusya go shopping for gifts and end up (out of pure curiosity!) in Mr. Morosini's shop. There they find an amazing snow globe, in which the Christmas pastoral suddenly gives way to a scene from a sinister thriller. And the heroines have to save the inhabitants of the ball.
During the course of the story, Nina and Dusya will meet the boy musician Zyablik, the donkey poet Bartholomew, the athlete woman Snezhanna, and all this will turn out to be a funny detective story with interesting fairy-tale characters, intrigues and adventures.
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10. Valery Ronshin,
"Tales about astronauts"
The book by St. Petersburg writer Valery Ronshin contains funny fantastic stories about an astronaut-prince from the planet Ellonia, who flew to Earth in search of a princess; cosmonaut Yegor, who dreams of finding the beautiful planet he saw in a dream; cashier Zemlyanichkin, who visited the moon and became friends with the local monster Vya-vya; hereditary cosmonaut Igorka, who ended up with aliens. And also about the horse that first set foot on Mars:
« - Why, why such injustice? - my horse friend complained to me all the time. - Dogs have flown into space, rats have flown, even people have flown into space, but we horses have not.
“And because,” I answered her, “it is very difficult to choose a space suit for an astronaut horse; again, an astronaut horse will take up too much space in the spaceship.” Not to mention the fact that a space trailer with hay would have to be attached to the spaceship so that the astronaut horse would have something to crunch on during his space journey.”
She has always been and remains in demand, exerting an immense influence on children. Several generations have grown up reading the books of their favorite authors, who were the first to show children the clear line between good and evil, who taught them to know the laws of nature, the rules of communication with each other, who introduced them to history and other sciences in a presentation that a child could understand. Many ideals taken from children's books written by Soviet writers became the basis for the formation of a person's character. They remain in a person’s consciousness until the end of his life.
Soviet children's writers - authors of books for the younger generation - are a kind of teachers who have assumed moral and ethical responsibility for the formation of a worthy personality. For the adult generation of Russians, these names evoke the most pleasant associations.
Almost everyone is familiar with the poems of the Soviet poetess Agnia Barto. Family, pioneers, and the life of Soviet schoolchildren are the main themes of her kind, often funny works, popular among both children and adults. In them, Agnia Barto spoke the language of a real child, and in life she performed truly adult actions: she found and returned hundreds of children scattered throughout the country by the war to their families. The matter seems hopeless, because in childhood few people know complete information about themselves (address, physical features, necessary names). But many children could remember the bright moments of life (how they went sledding with Yegorka, how a rooster pecked painfully between the eyes, how they played with their beloved dog Dzhulbars). It was these memories that Agnia Barto, who knew how to speak the language of the children, used in her search.
For 9 years she was the host of the radio program “Find a Person,” on air of which she daily read out unique signs from letters flying from all over the country. The first issue alone helped seven people find their families, and over the entire period, under the strict guidance of Agnia Barto, who worked as a translator from the “children’s language,” 927 families were able to reunite.
Prominent representatives of children's writers of the Soviet era are Cheburashka, the cat Matroskin, Uncle Fyodor - and today these cartoon characters remain beloved and included in every home.
The engineering education he received did not in the least prevent Eduard Uspensky from becoming a favorite children's author. His book characters have successfully migrated to television screens and have been delighting viewers with their adventures for several decades now. Many of them had real prototypes. Thus, the writer portrayed his first wife, a lady who was harmful in all respects. Friend Nikolai Taraskin put on the image of the cat Matroskin: smart, hardworking and economical. At first, Uspensky wanted to give the cat the same last name, but his friend “got into a pose” and didn’t allow it, although later (after the cartoon was released) he regretted it more than once. A girl in a huge fur coat, once seen by the writer in a store, became the prototype of everyone’s favorite Cheburashka. The parents chose a fur coat for the baby to grow into over the summer, and the girl simply could not walk in it. As soon as she took a step, she fell. Dad, picking her up from the floor once again, said: “Well, what a Cheburashka you are” (from the word “Cheburashka” - to fall, crash).
Korney Chukovsky - children's favorite
Well, who doesn’t know the poems of Korney Chukovsky: “Tsokotukha Fly”, “Moidodyr”, “Cockroach”, “Aibolit”, “Barmaley”? Many Soviet writers wrote under their real name. Chukovsky was the pseudonym of Nikolai Vasilyevich Korneychukov. He wrote his most widely read works for himself and about his daughter Murochka, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 11. The poem “Aibolit” was a cry from the heart about a magical doctor who will fly in and save everyone. Besides Murochka, Chukovsky had three more children.
All his life, Korney Ivanovich helped those who turned to him for help, using his fame, charm and artistry to do this. Not all Soviet writers were capable of such open actions, but he sent money, got pensions, places in hospitals, apartments, helped gifted young writers to make their way, fought for those who were arrested, and showed concern for orphaned families. By the way, in honor of the Tsokotukha Fly, entomologist A.P. Ozerov in 1992 named a new species of antfly from the order Diptera - mucha tzokotucha.
Soviet writers made a significant contribution to children's literature, raising several generations of wonderful people through their works. How kindly, colorfully and informatively Vitaly Bianchi and Mikhail Prishvin tell children about the beauty of nature, instilling a love for it and our smaller brothers from a young age. Such famous Soviet writers as Arkady Gaidar, Valentin Kataev, Boris Zakhoder, and many others are still popular among readers today, because the idea of kindness and compassion for one’s neighbor runs like a red thread through all their works.
Sergei Vladimirovich Mikhalkov1913 - 2009
Born on March 13, 1913 in Moscow. Sergei's talent for poetry was discovered at the age of nine. In 1927, the family moved to the Stavropol Territory and then Sergei began to publish. In 1928, the first poem “The Road” was published in the magazine “On the Rise.” After graduating from school, Sergei Mikhalkov returns to Moscow and works at a weaving factory and on a geological exploration expedition. At the same time, in 1933, he became a freelance employee in the letters department of the Izvestia newspaper. Published in magazines: “Ogonyok”, “Pioneer”, “Prozhektor”, in newspapers: “Komsomolskaya Pravda”, “Izvestia”, “Pravda”. The first collection of poems is published. In 1935, the first known work was published, which became a classic of Russian and Soviet children's literature - the poem "Uncle Styopa".
During the Great Patriotic War, Mikhalkov correspondent for the newspapers “For the Glory of the Motherland” and “Stalin’s Falcon”. Together with the troops he retreated to Stalingrad and was shell-shocked. Awarded military orders and medals. Was awarded the USSR State Prize in 1942.
In 1944, the USSR government decided to change the old anthem. Mikhalkov and his co-author G. El-Registan became the authors of his text, winning a national competition. In 1977, after the adoption of the new Constitution of the USSR, Sergei Mikhalkov created the second edition of the words for the State Anthem of the USSR. On December 30, 2000, President V.V. Putin approved the text of the National Anthem of Russia based on the verses of Sergei Mikhalkov (third edition). The classic said in an interview that he sincerely wanted to compose “the anthem of an Orthodox country,” he is a believer and “has always been a believer.” “What I just wrote is close to my heart,” Mikhalkov said.
S. Mikhalkov died on August 27, 2009 at the age of 96.