On April 20 the leading children’s books publisher A-BA-BA-HA-LA-MA-HA celebrated its 20th anniversary. Today it is a brand that is associated with quality, style, and good taste. Ivan Malkovych & Co (famous writers and artists of different generations: Vsevolod Nestaiko, Volodymyr Rutkivsky, Hryhorii Falkovych, Sashko Dermansky, Taras Antypovych, Kost Lavro, Vladyslav Yerko, Sofia Us, Kateryna Shtanko, and others) never pursued high quantities. Instead, the most important criterion has always been the high quality – in order not to trash but to cultivate Ukrainian information space. A-BA-BA-HA-LA-MA-HA is also to some extent our response to Russians, who have practically flooded Ukrainian book market with their products. The books of the Ukrainian publishing house are in stable demand in Russia. Children in 19 countries of the world from Great Britain to South Korea read them too. (Over two decades A-BA-BA-HA-LA-MA-HA has published 200 different books with a general circulation of nearly 4.5 million copies).
We must say that Ivan Malkovych constantly creates precedents popularizing everything that is Ukrainian. He likes to repeat: “When in a book store on display there are books from various countries, we want our book to be so nice-looking that the child would want to take it himself. Then we simply won’t have any of the sad made-up problems.” For example, after the famous midnight presentation of the first book about Harry Potter on Khreshchatyk nearly 1,000 people lined up to buy the Ukrainian book at 1 a.m. By the way, the total number of all the Harry Potter series published in Ukrainian reached one million copies!
Kateryna Fedorenko, director of Knyharnia Ye bookstore chain said: “A-BA-BA-HA-LA-MA-HA is always in our TOP-20 books that sell the best. Besides their books are known far beyond Ukraine. Diaspora often come to buy the ABC, Snow Queen, Favourite Poems, Honey for Mommy, and others.”
Oxana Pachlovska, professor at the La Sapienza University of Rome continued: “The creation of Ivan Malkovych is perhaps the Ukraine which hasn’t been realized yet. Thus, let’s wish the country to once become what Ivan Malkovych designed to be his career. Because Malkovych’s profession is the heart of the future, it is making books for children.”
“These post-Easter days urge us to think about the eternal things,” sums up Bishop of UGCC Iosyf (Milian). “Those eternal things begin right from grandma’s fairy tales, then from simple catechesis, framed in a fable for children. Actually, it shaped Ukrainian people, who survived the scientific atheism, which declared that there was no God. Because grandma had told that there is God. And children believed her. As far as I know Ivan Malkovych, he is a very traditional man, in a good sense. He managed to put these traditional values, our spiritual and cultural tradition into his books. That is why they are so nice, kind, and sincere.”
