Last Thursday, on the birthday of the great fairy-tale author Hans Christian Andersen, we marked International Children’s Book Day. Shortly before this date, Ukrainian children’s libraries held the Week of Reading. Still in progress are regional stages of the Knyhomania all-Ukrainian competition of children’s reading organized by the prestigious Publishers Forum and Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science.
Also one of these days, the 4th springtime book fair Medvin is opening in Kyiv. Its program includes, among other things, an exhibit of books for children; celebrations of the 75th anniversary of Veselka, Ukraine’s oldest children’s publishing house; a competition of handicapped children’s drawings; In the World of Fantasy, a forum of children’s and young people’s science fiction and fantasy books. Very soon, on May 7–9, Lviv will host the third children’s book fair Forum of Publishers to Children and the fifth all-Ukrainian festival of children’s reading, Knyhomania.
According to experts, although the government-funded Ukrainian Book program has a chapter titled “Literature for Children and Adolescents,” there is no exact statistics (by contrast with other countries that have a similar program) about how many children’s books are printed in Ukraine and how the dynamics of their publication varies.
Incidentally, 20 million hryvnias have been earmarked for implementing this program this year — half the last year’s amount. Besides, just a few Ukrainian publishing houses, such as Veselka, A-Ba-Ba-Ha-La-Ma-Ha, and Vydavnytstvo Staroho Leva, specialize in children’s books. As a result, there are almost no books for the youngest (without a text, just with bright drawings) and very few works for teenagers; we lack modern prose for children and modern children’s poetry.
We must note here the initiative of the Hrani-T publishing house which holds the Golden Stork contest in search of modern-day long and short stories for children, attracting professional writers as well as amateurs. “Judging by the last year’s results, we, publishers, were supposed to achieve an absolutely new level of the Ukrainian children’s book, says Diana Klochko, editor in chief of Hrani-T, but we see now that the ordinary people’s purchasing power is not sufficient to keep up the last year’s pace of development. Meanwhile, bureaucrats are brushing aside children’s books because they must support academic literature. They do not consider children’s books socially important. All the state supports is fairy tales (I do not take into account textbooks and manuals), while the works of contemporary writers are regarded as commercial literature. In other words, the state has turned its back on us. I am not saying that nobody cares for libraries, but the fact that children’s books are not being purchased for libraries makes the younger generation think that modern children’s literature does not exist at all. This raises the question: what will this generation grow to be?”
Incidentally, the Ukrainian-language Den’ is soon going to publish an interview with Oleksandra Koval, president of the Publishers Forum, on the problems of children’s reading in this country. “Those who took to reading in childhood will be doing so their entire lifetime,” Koval says rightly.
Solomiika KOZOLUP, 6 years old, Lviv, going to school this year:
She reads very slowly, syllable by syllable, so she can usually read headlines and introductions, then she takes the book to her mother and asks her to read the fairy tale to the end. When mother asks why she thinks there is a fairy tale in this very book, Solomiika says she has read it by herself. She is very fond of reading, usually in the evening. Her favorite fairy tale and book are Cinderella and The Best Books about Princesses, respectively. The latest thing she read is the journal Winnie i yoho druzi.
Natalia MALIMON, The Day’s own correspondent in Volyn oblast, grandmother of four-year-old Yurchyk:
“My grandson Yurchyk got first acquainted with books in a very early age, much to the surprise of us, his relatives. He had not yet been a year old, when he got signed up with three children’s libraries. Naturally, it was his mother who signed up to check out books for him. We suddenly realized that our family budget was not enough to buy books which we like and which we need.
“In such an early age, Yurko would actively examine the drawings and listen to short poems. He will turn five very soon, in May, and he now takes his favorite books to the kindergarten to show them to other children. Can you imagine what books do present-day children take to the kindergarten? An Encyclopedia of Automobiles, An Encyclopedia of Knights, and Traffic Rules (!), one of my grandson’s most favorite books. He knows the latter, as well as An Encyclopedia of Automobiles, as perfectly as an amateur driver does.
“He likes books because we like them and read them. Now he himself often chooses in the bookcase the one that interests him at the moment. It is a ritual of sorts to read a booklet or two before sleeping. In the last while, two books have made a deep impression on him. The first one, Why Does a Human Need the Heart? by Anatolii Dimarov (a bibliographic rarity because it has not been republished for a long time), may be too difficult for his age. But when we began to read it, he listened spellbound to the very end and asked us to reread it. He was also thrilled by the fairy tale Tom O’ My Thumb, although he normally takes a lukewarm attitude to traditional fairy tales.
“The Ukrainian market of children’s fairy tales is, at first glance, very rich. Everything is so bright and beautiful… But there is so much trash, and books are not cheap at all, which kills interest in reading.”
Tetiana DIATLYK, 15 years old, Donetsk:
“I love reading every day. I have already read about 500 books. Now I am reading The Space Trilogy by Clive Lewis and The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey. I like Clive Lewis because he knows very well how to put his thoughts across to people and spreads Christian ideas by means of his books. When he writes a fairy tale or a fantasy, an ordinary person will read it as a fairy tale, while a believer will understand a deeper sense. I am also fond very much of Tolkien. When I read his books, I admire his talent, for he invented several languages to write The Lord of the Rings. I also like reading Taras Shevchenko because he could express his feelings very well in poems.”
Kateryna PIONTKOVSKA, 13 years old, Zhytomyr:
“I read every day. I like reading science fiction, the works of Dmytro Yemets, John Ronald Tolkien, and Vsevolod Nestaiko. What impresses me in these books is an unconventional view of the world. I also like reading about all kinds of magic schools and creatures.”
Oleksii LAKEI, 2nd-grade pupil, Rivne:
“Our school principal said we should read at least 8 to 10 pages every day. This is quite a lot, of course, but I am doing well and trying to fulfill this task. I even read during the vacations! I like this. It is most interesting to read magazines, of course, such as Shrek, Cars, and Spiderman. Mom buys them for me. But in school fiction is required reading. So I have to go to the library. I check out fairy tales and stories there.
“The latest book I read was Professor Fortran’s Encyclopedia. It is about the adventures of a cat, a sparrow, a caterpillar, and a professor. The book is big, but I liked it. But my most favorite book is The Life of Dinosaurs. My granddad and grandma presented it to me. It has a lot of 3D illustrations. The book is very, very interesting. It is about dinosaurs that lived on Earth millions of years ago. The largest of them was Tyrannosaurus rex. It was five meters tall and a solid 14 meters long. But this dinosaur had very small ‘arms’ and ‘hands’ with just two fingers. Isn’t this interesting? I also like morning readings in class. The teacher reads us about how bricks or chocolates are made or about something else that I have not known before.”
