Детские чтения

In the introduction to the «Archive» section, a retrospective review of critical reviews concerning travel literature, guidebooks, popular science literature on geographical themes, as well as educational aids on regional studies and maps, is proposed. The aim of the article is to present the history of the emergence and development of ideas by educators, critics, geographers, and writers about the types of publications and genre forms of travel literature, travelogues, and popular science literature used as material for learning geography. The enlightening nature of this topic prompts critics to discuss various forms of interaction with readers: from visual narratives in maps and globes to the academic presentation of material in descriptions of expeditions undertaken by geographers and travelers. The absence of a conventional definition of geographical literature as a genre creates diverse ways of its interpretation by educators, critics, and scholars, as well as discussions related to defining its audience. In turn, the multidimensionality of geography as a science, encompassing natural science, economic-political, and applied aspects, generates debates around approaches to its study.

Впервые опубликовано в: Книга детям. 1930. № 5/6. С. 19–26.

The article examines Soviet children’s popular science literature on geography and educational geographical maps of the 1920s and 1930s, considering the map as an instrument of state influence, through which students forms an understanding of the country’s territory and the world. The author identifies two opposite approaches to teaching geography. The first, local approach is based on the idea of the country as a collection of equal regions, emphasizing the localization of geography and prioritizing the study the home region. The second, centralizing approach, is characterized by an increase in the significance of territorial expansion, an emphasis on the role of borders and the construction of hierarchies. These approaches coexisted, manifesting throughout both decades, but the local history approach, which manifested itself most clearly in the 1920s, eventually gave way to the antagonistic centralizing approach, whose influence grew in the 1930s due to consistent reforms in geographical education. Cartography under the local approach is characterized by the function of representing reality and the promoting active interaction between students and study guides, while maps in the centralizing approach function to construct geographical reality, positioning the student as an observer who, through these maps, becomes familiar with the country’s history. These considerations are conceptualized using the concepts of «route map» and «border map» from modern critical cartography studies. The article summarizes the differentiated role of maps: in the local approach, maps primarily aim to foster a local identity in students, while in the centralizing approach, their role gravitates toward serving an instrument of political indoctrination. 

The article analyzes the portrayal of the newly established Soviet state’s territory in a series of popular children’s books published from 1927 to 1929 under the general subtitle «How They Live and What They Do,» dedicated to the peoples of the USSR and their respective territories. Recommended for general schools’ study, this series of books contributed to geographical imagination of schoolchildren in the 1920s. The paper examines the principles on which the image of the geography of the new Soviet country was built, contrasting it with the representation of the Russian Empire’s territory in similar pre-1917 literature, and analyzing the specifically Soviet unity between the territory and the ethnicity. The model of geographical structure constructed by the books divided into the central, ethnically unmarked part and the national peripheries, a hierarchical construction in which the privilege of seeing and speaking belongs to the subject in a semantic and geographical center. The article explores the complex dialectics of ethnographic and pragmatic perspectives on territories characteristic of the book series: from the sites of ethnic ways of life to spaces of industrial modernity and the economic resource for the state.

This article examines the relationship between the age category of readers and the ways in which geographical space is represented in children’s and adolescent literature. The selected materials are books from contemporary Russian literature that focus on Chukotka, an extremely remote and exotic border region often portrayed as a frontier. These works reflect the natural-geographical substrate through the use of toponyms, descriptions of flora and fauna, and the occupations of residents. However, myths and fairy tales are central to the narrative. The combination of scientific, educational, and artistic components varies depending on the readers’ age group. In the «Tales of the Far East» series, Chukotka is depicted from the perspective of a child from central Russia, with fairy tales framed by the modern world, conveyed through travelogue or fantasy models. Sources include works by historians, ethnographers, and folklorists. In Rudashevsky’s story, the artistic element predominates, using adventure genre techniques, as suggested by the title «The Eater is Looking for a White Owl.» The author reconstructs the life of a now-extinct Inuit tribe, with the narrative supplemented by historical information from anthropologist Dmitry Oparin. The story portrays the tragic clash between the mythological worldview, the ancient lifestyle of sea animal hunters, and advancing civilization, leading to environmental disasters and the extinction or assimilation of indigenous peoples. Thus, the cultural landscape of Chukotka is constructed through the historical dynamics of these books. 

The article examines the short stories and novels of the Soviet children’s writer Nikolai Nosov (1908–1976), primarily written in the 1940s–1950s. The main focus of the research interest is the everyday spaces depicted in these texts, such as the school, house, yard, dacha, and pioneer camp. In the framework of the method of «cultural geography», these toposes are understood not only as concrete material objects but also as ideological and symbolic spaces. The analysis of key, iconic locations in Nosov’s prose of the 1940s–1950s leads to the conclusion that his books normalise the representation of the Soviet school and Soviet childhood. The topoi of the world in which Nosov’s characters live are portrayed as the normal, desirable, «correct» space of life here and now, without constant looking back at the revolutionary perestroika in the past or the desire to move to a utopian future. It can be argued that Nosov contributed to creating an illusory and ideologically laden image of the Soviet school (yard, pioneer camp) and the Soviet country as the best place for life — at least for children. 

The article examines the series of books by Andrew Peterson «The Wingfeather Saga» (2008–2014), written in the genre of epic fantasy and aimed at children. The theme of the journey referring to the hero’s evolution and spiritual growth is of special importance there (thus, the geography of the fictional world is well-developed, featured on the maps and correlated with the history). By choosing children as protagonists, the author introduces an additional specificity into hiswork: the characters’ age features and their gradual evolution are highlighted: they become braver and tougher, abandon childish egocentrism, accept their duties and responsibilities, and move to a new stage in their relations both with the people and the Maker. The author of the article notes that in addition to the loci traditionally depicted in books belonging to the epic fantasy genre (the castle of the main villain, dangerous mountains, magic forest, idyllic hometown), Peterson introduces a school into the narrative as a setting, which belongs to another literary tradition. The theme of growing-up and spiritual improvement, overcoming the temptations brings together the fantasy story, closer to both the Bildungsroman and the genre of allegory.

The Leningrad radio programme «Vesti iz Lesa» (News from the Forest), broadcast on All-Union Radio from 1956 to 1970, was a successful Soviet radio project for children. Despite its narrow target audience (young children) and limited content focused on forest themes, the programme attracted a wide range of listeners of different ages («from pioneers to pensioners», according to Nikolai Sladkov). This is evidenced by the hundreds of letters t received by the editorial office «Leningrad, radio «Vesti iz Lesa»» every month. The research material for this article includes a corpus of letters stored in the archive of the writer and «nature writer» Nikolay Sladkov (the compiler of the scripts), as well as microphone cards from «Vesti iz Lesa» in the archive of the Gosteleradio St. Petersburg – 5 channel. The subject of the study is the reception of the nature science programme by different age groups of radio listeners. Analysis of the editorial mail reveals that for many thousands of listeners, the programme «Vesti iz Lesa» legitimized the human right to perceive nature without regard to economic benefits, cultural standards, or ideological and patriotic dogma. The editorial board’s position diverged from the ideological mainstream that dominated Soviet radio in the late 1950s-1960s, but resonated with the radio listeners of the time. This perception of nature, transcending ideological and cultural barriers, contributed to the creation of an «emotional community» around the programme founded by Vitaliy Bianki and his associates.

The review of Gianni Rodari and His English Readers. A Dialogical Perspective by Claudia Alborghetti highlights the main steps in the translation and reception of Gianni Rodari’s works in the English-speaking countries. The comprehensive historical, paratextual, and translational analysis follows the evolution of Rodari’s books in English from the first UK translation back in 1965 to contemporary US ones. By adopting a translational and pedagogical perspective focussed on empathy, the study reveals how translation affects the empathising process in children’s literature and the role played by translators and other mediators. The empathy building process can be manipulated to adapt to the target cultural context and value system, and the empathic charge of books can be limited or diminished. However, the empathic dialogue of the author with their readers can also be retained in translation, allowing children to connect with a different culture and children’s literature to liberate its unique potential. 

The review of the monograph by Marina Kostyukhina, All Year Round: Children’s Life by the Calendar, published by Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie in 2024, characterizes the content and structure of the research, while also providing remarks and questions. The reviewer positively assesses the research results, emphasizing its scope and breadth of material coverage. Marina Kostyukhina examines the history of children’s calendars of the 19th and 20th centuries and offers an original interpretation. The reviewer notes some contentious interpretations and factual inaccuracies but commends the author’s enthusiasm, dynamic narrative, and unexpected perspectives and approaches to the topic of children’s calendars. Various forms and genres of printed calendars (desktop, wall, tear-off, universal, thematic, published as almanacs, and others) are analyzed and considered by the author of the monograph in the context of children’s lives in all its aspects. The author of the book pays special attention to the Soviet period, focusing not only on the calendars themselves but also on the conceptualization of the category of time as it applied to the lives of children during that era.

The research «Children’s Seminar» has been held since 2012 once a month. The organizers of the seminar are the staff of the Center for Children’s Literature Research at the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Svetlana Maslinskaya, Inna Sergienko, Anna Dimianenko and Olga Luchkina. The seminar sessions discuss a wide range of issues related to modern methods and directions of studying children’s literature (canon studies, propaganda, taboo, gender, etc.), examined on a variety of materials: Soviet children’s literature, children’s cinema, children’s periodicals, educational books, children’s writers, the interaction of national literatures, criticism of children’s literature. The key feature of the seminar is its interdisciplinary nature and a wide international audience of listeners and participants. 

The third edition of the «Giornate di studio sulla ritraduzione» Ritradurre la letteratura per ragazzi (University of Trento) had a special focus on the retranslation of children’s literature. The aim of these meetings is to bring together specialists of different languages and cultures and provide them with a space for discussion taking the idea of retranslation as a vantage point, as well as to propose a practical and theoretical reflection on the concept of retranslation. Children’s literature is a particularly interesting field of investigation for a variety of interrelated reasons including it’s tendency to favour target-oriented translation approaches and its key role in processes of nation-building. The Trento conference saw the participation of twenty speakers, from a number of Italian and European universities, whose contributions dealt with different historical periods and cultural spheres. These contributions investigated phenomena concerning the history of language and especially emphasised the profound connections between children’s literature, politics and deep changes in ideology and society.