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Reviewed by:
  • Zolotykh Stupenek Riad: Kniga o Detstve I Knigi Detstva by Evgeniia Putilova
  • Marina Balina
Zolotykh Stupenek Riad: Kniga o Detstve I Knigi Detstva.
[A Series of Golden Steps: A Book about Childhood and Childhood Books].
Evgeniia Putilova. St. Petersburg: Dom detskoi knigi, 2015. 312pages.
ISBN: 978-5990580763

The latest book authored by Evgeniia Oskarovna Putilova, who is widely recognized as a doyen of Russian children’s literature, history, and criticism, is an important achievement even for this well-known scholar. In her study of her favorite subject, Russian children’s literature, Putilova seamlessly combines her personal story with the thoroughly researched history of children’s literature of different periods, from the very beginnings of this literature’s formation to the major contributions during the Soviet era. In contemporary criticism of Russian children’s literature, it has become almost obligatory to stress the rift between the pre-revolutionary period and the radical change to the government-controlled Soviet literary production for children. From the very first pages of her book, Putilova refuses to conform to this pattern, thus creating a provocative image of continuity and cultural legacy among the most important children’s writers before and after the October Revolution. She identifies deep ties between generations of children’s writers in Russia and refuses to surrender to the widely circulated notion that the body of Soviet Russian children’s texts manifested a deep disconnect with previously published works. A Book about Childhood is, in fact, a compact history [End Page 60] of Russian children’s literature presented from the most unexpected angle.

The book consists of four parts and a preface entitled “My World: Children’s Literature”. In this foreword, Putilova shares with her readers the journey she undertook to become the leading critic and historian of Russian children’s literature. An astute student of philology, she first dedicated her attention to Russian classics and investigated works by Fyodor Dostoevsky, but soon shifted her attention to a subject she knew very little about – children’s literature. Reflecting on this transition, the scholar writes, “The more I had to read children’s books and think about them, the more I became enchanted by the enormous wealth of this new world that was opening up to me. I understood that within this world I finally found my calling in life” (Putilova, 9).

The four parts that follow the introduction are rather eclectic. The first two are organized chronologically. Part One, entitled “For the Heart and Mind”, references the title of the very first periodical for children, Children’s Reading for the Heart and Mind, created in 1785 by journalist and writer Nikolai Novikov. In this section, Putilova incorporates a concise chart of the milestones in the development of children’s literature, thereby devoting her attention to some of the neglected personalities of this process. Alongside canonic names like Dmitrii Fonvizin and Aleksandr Shishkov, she talks about Andrei Bolotov and the special contribution to children’s literature made by Catherine II. The chapters in this part are organized thematically, although they are dedicated to one or two classics of Russian literature, such as Anton Chekhov or Leo Tolstoy. Their contribution to children’s literature is viewed not as a byproduct of their writing for the adult audience, but rather as a conscious attempt to create serious works both thematically and esthetically addressed to the young.

The same approach is used by Putilova when she transitions into Part Two, “While Opening the Door into the Workshop.” Among the writers discussed in this section, one can find some of Russia’s most famous poets: Aleksander Block, Osip Mandelshtam, Ol’ga Bergholts, and Nikolai Zabolotskii. This chapter is particularly concerned with the techniques employed by these writers when their addressee was a child. Putilova recalibrates her focus from the history of children’s literature creation to the creative process. Among the most interesting contributions to this part (at least for this reviewer) are the essays written on Nikolai Zabolotskii and Arkadii Gaidar. Putilova opens “the door into the workshop” of these writers to her readers. When she writes about Zabolotskii, she demonstrates the complexity of his work for children as a platform for his future...

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