Russian Children's Classics

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Arenel at Slightly Cultural, Most Thoughtful and Inevitably Irrelevant  has written up a wonderful list of pre-1960 Russian classics for us!  These are all books that are available in English under the titles listed (though you might have an interesting time tracking some of them down) and are all long-time favorites of hers.

I've put all of them on my list and am very excited about reading them, though I fully expect that it will be a while before I can read most of them.  I was quite happy when Arenel offered to write this up, so thank you Arenel!

A Bilibin illustration of "Vasilisa the Beautiful"


As long as we're talking Russian children's literature, be sure to keep an eye out for stories illustrated by the great Ivan Bilibin (1876-1942).  He illustrated many folk and fairy tales, and I am lucky to have a very old paperback folio of Pushkin's Tale of Tsar Saltan illustrated by him. 

Comments

  1. ArenelJanuary 2, 2013 at 4:11 PM

    Thanks for spreading the word! And I completely love Bilibin too! It's a pity there are usually another illustrations in new editions, but I still have my old books illustrated by him back at home, and I'd never change them for new ones)) I should have probably spend more time on this and find some illustrations myself, but unfortunately I don't have much of it (time, I mean:))

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  2. JeanJanuary 2, 2013 at 4:47 PM

    Oh, I already had that Vasilisa one. :) In fact last night I was looking for ebooks featuring Bilibin illustrations, in hopes that they had gone out of copyright. Amazon does have a lot available--they are not free, but they aren't expensive either.

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