Joseph Brodsky "Working ABC. Working alphabet. Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky - "Working ABC". Manual for the study of letters and professions. The book is a hidden object game. All this is mixed with the poetry of Brodsky and the amazing illustrations of Oleinikov. Come on

Not so long ago I discovered the Labyrinth online store. And digging once again in the assortment found a very interesting book. And I remembered it for myself, I planned to purchase it a little later. But, Library Night was not in vain) In the network store "Read the City" I saw this book for ... 293 rubles. (in the Labyrinth - 593 rubles), so also in connection with the action, they threw off 30% - 205 rubles. !!!

Meet - "Working ABC" by Joseph Brodsky.

Reviews for this book are very mixed. On one side of the scale are beautiful illustrations and the edition itself, and on the other are the poet's poems. After weighing the pros and cons, I decided to buy it. But I'm still a little confused.) Let's see if the ABC from the Nobel Prize winner in literature is really so good.

Let's start with the publication itself.

The cover is made of thick cardboard, partially varnished.

Book size:

30.7 x 27.7 x 1 cm.

Publisher:

The book can be said to be fantastic!

Artist Igor Oleinikov. The illustrations are very bright and interesting. In addition to the profession, it is necessary in the form of a game to find several items on the spread with the corresponding letter. At first, I did not pay attention to the footnote, so I was somewhat confused by the abundance of objects that were not related in meaning (except for the first letter). But then you can get a taste and even begin to like such a pun.

At the end, answers to all the hidden objects are given, so you can check yourself. But the words are mostly complex, such as cyclamen, dinosaur, hooves, boobies, jerboa, etc.

I would like to note that the humor on the pages will be understood more by an adult than a child.

There are 48 pages in the ABC. Some letters have a full spread, while others have just a page.

The first few letters did not cause me any complaints when we did not reach the letter "E":

"The greed of letters is terrible, children!
I have traveled all countries
but in the world, oh, in the world,
no profession on E."

Probably a dubious assumption. I didn't even think twice about the Jaeger and the Egyptologist. (although maybe these are not professions at all ...) By the way, according to Brodsky, there are no professions, also on SC, S (this is already understandable))))

"Friend of the filled wagons,
enemy of the empty,
lives on the platforms
RAILWAYER."

I read this verse several times while I figured out about the enemy, etc. The one that will have to work hard to explain all this to the child)

Letter "I":

"In five minutes to break the clock
maybe my friend.
He is smarter than a fox:
he is an INVENTOR."

Show me a cunning inventor... Usually they are eccentric people, true to their work. Maybe Brodsky disliked some inventor?!

Letter "K":

"And the harvester, and the horse,
and a flea at the end.
kicks, no fire
not living, SMITH."

You need to be more careful when reading, otherwise it will turn out that the blacksmith is not alive at all with us.)))

Also the last letter "I":

"This alphabet, friends,
I composed for you today."

And in the key to the answer: I am Brodsky. It would probably be more appropriate to place praise on the letter "P" -poet. Well, that's the author's intention. We cannot judge him.

I gave examples of, in my opinion, the most controversial poems. But in general, they are all built in such a complex language.

When I first started writing a review, I wanted to give 3 stars, but I will probably increase it to 4. Oh, this Brodsky))) I will definitely show the ABC to my son, but not as the only and main benefit, but as an additional one.

If you don't like going out of your way, don't buy this book. There are plenty of familiar alphabets and primers in stores.

How did the book make you feel? It is very interesting to me)

Perhaps the publishers of Rabochaya Azbuka, when planning their publication, knew for sure that Iosif Alexandrovich Brodsky sincerely loved this very children's work, written by him in the years of his poetic youth, and, accordingly, would be extremely pleased with the current appearance of a large multi-colored book. Maybe the publishers were sure that a big name is always the key to success. Everything can be. But the main thing is the result, and it deserves close attention and serious doubts.

Let's leave for a while small children, to whom, in theory, the ABC is addressed. Let's look at potential adult readers, without whom the book will not reach children anyway. If we have before us a man from the generation for whom Brodsky Almost all, such a knowledgeable person, perhaps, with some bewilderment, will raise an eyebrow and begin to consciously decide whether he wants to show “such Brodsky” to his grandchildren. But if a young parent, who is not very experienced in Russian poetry of the 20th century, opens the book and reads a “verse” with the letter “I” or the letter “K” (yes, almost all letters), his surprise will probably know no bounds: Is this Brodsky? The one I haven't read yet, but heard a lot about? The one that is the winner? And so that I can tell my child ... We won’t remember teachers, because the practical application of the text is very problematic: each “working” word of the “Working ABC”, that is, the word that marks the desired letter, is most often simply lost among other optional words.

Now, it seems, it's time to apologize for gross tactlessness and disrespect for authorities. In any case, Marina Aromshtam, editor-in-chief of the Papmambuk Internet resource, does not advise saying in an intelligent company that “Some children's poems by Joseph Brodsky are somehow not very good for me”. It is better to remain silent, otherwise it will turn out indecently.

But I don't want to apologize. For two reasons. Firstly, even during the period of samizdat, not all "intelligent companies" were made to be reverent just in case. Secondly, there is a more important concern: the current magnificent edition of the "children's Brodsky" makes us once again think about the principles of modern treatment of people and books of bygone years.

The classic is defenseless. This is not just a fact, it is the inevitability of our uncertain times. An argument that is far from over. Let's leave alone "redrawn" pictorial masterpieces or operas, cut in half. The modest possibilities of our site are enough to meet Pushkin, clumsily retold for children “in his own words” (see: Detailed: IMPROVED PUSHKIN), or, on the contrary, Turgenev, who benefited from the careful intervention of modern publishing professionals (see: Detailed: Perrault Sh. Tales). In our present case, we are talking only about choice. About the right to choose. About the right to present the author with ANY of his works.

In a serious and convincing book by Lev Losev “Joseph Brodsky. The Experience of a Literary Biography” is a mention that the poet Brodsky never recognized the first collection of poems published in America with the best of intentions as his own, because the composition of the collection was not agreed with him, and the texts were not read by him personally. Yes, the poet Brodsky was proud, serious and proud. Just like a poet should. So who will swear now that he really would like to reprint literally the following from the old magazine into a new book today:

Electricity, gas -
daily work
all conveniences for us
creates MANAGER.

It becomes especially sad when (for the sake of decency?) even similar texts a modern commentator carefully draws to the usual ideology: “... Brodsky, in principle, did not like “labor”, arranged in a Soviet way ...<…>... it is impossible not to feel hidden mockery in these verses ...<…>…the jokes are already reeking of dissidence…”(M. Aromshtam). It is unlikely that Joseph Aleksandrovich Brodsky needs his not-too-successful, passing "children's" lines to be "justified" by the political confrontation with the totalitarian regime. The question is what to do with such lines to the next generation, first of publishers, and then of readers. Forget? Save for study? Raise to the shield, "because it's Brodsky"?

Listing the different life situations that befell a person born as a poet, Lev Losev writes: "Teaching(at American universities. - I.L.) sometimes Brodsky was carried away, sometimes it was a burden to him, but he always treated his work conscientiously, just as he did not hack, writing children's poems or texts for cinema in Leningrad.. I would like to believe that this was the case. Not only believe, but look for concrete evidence. When in the middle of the same "Working ABC" a couple of lines suddenly flash: “There are no positions on S.H.I.E.L. / You will sweat all over looking for them”, - the soul immediately becomes easier. You immediately remember not the author's anti-Soviet orientation, but the fact that Anna Andreevna Akhmatova called the young Brodsky simply "red" (which he was until his hair turned gray).

You also remember what a wonderful result the reasonably selective publication of children's poems by the great adult poet leads to. This has been proven by the repeated publication of The Ballad of the Little Tugboat. This is proved by the collection "Elephant and Maruska", the creators of which did not choose, but honestly gathered together all the "childish-Broad" that they managed to find. The result is a living book in which the young author feels differently: sometimes better, sometimes worse - like any poet in any collection. However, such a book is suitable for everything: for children to read it - not preparatory students studying the first letters, but older children, already ready for "red" humor and poetic play; to be read by adults who value every word, every sound, every drop of new knowledge about their favorite poet. Even not the most successful "Working ABC", placed in the collection among other poems, seems to be more coherent. It `s naturally. If we do not insist with the help of a separate publication that it is the AZBUKA before us, the “teaching” effect subsides, and it becomes clear how Brodsky Joseph, twenty-three years old, a huge Brodsky, who by nature cannot think simply, is trying to smile at the children. Under the given circumstances real life, at the dawn of future mastery, tries to smile as best he can. How did it happen…

Now you have to start all over again. The fact is that the "Working ABC", published by the publishing house "Akvarel" in 2013, looks like an author's book by the artist Igor Oleinikov, in which for some reason there are poems by Joseph Brodsky. There is also a publisher's call "Join the game!". The game is simple: “On each page there are many objects with the corresponding letter. Find them, and then test yourself at the end of the book ... ". Let's try to check the logic of what is happening. It's also not very difficult. Brodsky writes: AGRONOM. Oleinikov draws quite “agronomic” watermelons, oranges, apricots and, for some reason, a stork with a harp. Brodsky writes: PILOT. Oleinikov draws armor, a lemon, a fox, a frog. And so on. The drawings are huge, beautiful, inventive. If you wish, you can admire for a long time how they expand children's horizons and help mental activity. It remains to be understood why, for the sake of such a fairly traditional developmental test with a check “at the end of the book”, publishers needed poems on a specific “working” topic and the efforts of a wonderful artist who, as a result, created his own a parallel world barely touching the text?

Leafing through the "Working ABC" is very strange, because the names of its authors promise, it would seem, a completely different result. After all, just recently, a little over a year ago, the creative union of the poet Brodsky and the artist Oleinikov became a real event in children's literature: we had an absolutely harmonious, obviously classic edition of The Ballad of a Little Tugboat, published by the Azbuka-Atticus publishing house. After this happy book, somewhere in the clouds, a real hope for a creative understanding between all the good people who lived and who lives, flashed. She flickered and left again.

Probably publishing classics is a particularly difficult task.

Irina Linkova

The best alphabet

Joseph Brodsky
Working alphabet

(Watercolor)

The absolute hit of this year is "Working ABC", published by the young St. Petersburg publishing house "Akvarel". Unconditional - because the book is doomed to success: it contains Brodsky's poems and illustrations by all parents adored by Igor Oleinikov (the “Ballad of a small tug” has already been published by such a duet). That is, this is the option when parents run to buy a children's book primarily for themselves.

The future Nobel laureate, who was accused of parasitism in his homeland, wrote poems about work not entirely at the behest of the muses, but to earn extra money. Therefore, the text cannot do without a satirical intonation, and descriptions of professions can be very absurd and seemingly incomprehensible to children.

Break the clock in five minutes

Maybe my friend

He is smarter than a fox:

He is an INVENTOR.

An important addition here is Oleinikov's incredible illustrations, which enhance the feeling of phantasmagoria to the limit - all pages are filled with chaotic images starting with a given letter and more. As a phantasmagoria, “Working ABC” is recommended to be perceived. Do not be afraid that the children will not understand everything: for them, the meeting of the janitor with a dinosaur - it's not surprising.

Another beautifully designed book by an adult poet - Osip Mandelstam - for children is preparing to be released this year by the Samokat publishing house. Collages-illustrations were made by the artist Anna Desnitskaya. You can look through the book, subscribe to it, and also watch master classes on creating collages on the official website.

The best book for walking

Ksenia Dryzlova, Zina Surova
Finders. We walk and play - we know the world

(Mann, Ivanov and Ferber)

"Finders" by Ksenia Dryzlova and Zina Surova is such a quest-album with which you must definitely walk along the streets, through the forest, dacha, yard, city, sea, in summer and winter. In Soviet times, schoolchildren had a wildlife observation diary in which they had to note when they found the first flowers and draw how the grass changes over the summer and what icicles look like. Finders seem to revive and develop this idea, and at the same time help parents have a good time with their children or vice versa, give them independent tasks. On each page, it is proposed to find and mark the trees, animals, people or objects encountered during the walk.

The Find Finds format was tested in the form of pages for printing on the blog (kokokokids.ru) of one of the co-authors of the book, Ksenia Dryzlova, and earned a lot of positive feedback. The publishing house "Mann, Ivanov and Ferber", which specializes in developing literature, published a book on thick paper, the sheets are connected by a spring, so that it is convenient to turn them over and color them right in the open air. Recommended age from 3 to 7 years.

Best Art Book

Katarina Yanniku
My First Museum: Discovering Van Gogh

(Polandria)

The books of the new series "My First Museum" of the St. Petersburg publishing house "Polyandria" are an ideal option for parents who are passionate about the idea of early artistic development children. Up to three years, you can show Van Gogh and Monet, which are accompanied by poems and leading questions. Remember how easy it was to remember the genres of painting in the famous Kushner's "If you see a river is drawn in the picture ..."? Here the combination of text and painting works just as well. The Greek woman Katarina Yanniku came up with this format, she plans to continue her initiative "Polyandria" by releasing new books in the series with the most famous works Russian artists and poems by Russian authors. Age is rightly marked by the publisher from 0 to 99.

For older children, Eksmo this year released a series of coloring pages “I am an artist. Color the Masterpiece!”, in which you can try to reproduce the paintings of Leonardo, Botticelli, Vermeer and the Impressionists.

The best reprint

Yuri Koval
Wormwood Tales

(Meshcheryakov Publishing House)

Yuri Koval, Tatiana Mavrina
Butterflies, Foal, Glass Pond,
Cranes, Snow and hare trails

(Children's literature)

In 2013, the 75th anniversary of the writer Yury Koval is celebrated. The forger is one of those classics that will never become obsolete and will not become irrelevant. Moreover, his speech, full of images and some intimate sensations, is as close as possible to how a child perceives the world.

Fortunately, a lot of books by Yuri Koval were decided to be released by many publishing houses for the anniversary.

Perhaps the best options for a home library (and no less a must-have than Brodsky and Oleinikov) were reprints of books by Yuri Koval with drawings by Tatyana Mavrina published 30 years after the first edition (both the artist and the writer were awarded the Andersen medal and diploma for their contribution to children's literature ): "Butterflies", "Foal", "Glass Pond", "Cranes", "Snow" and "Hare Trails". Small, per page, texts are ideally combined with almost impressionistic, semi-childish drawings and are suitable for any age.

BUT " Meshcheryakov Publishing House"Republished Wormwood Tales - wonderful, like childhood memories, with excellent illustrations by Nikolai Ustinov. If you haven’t read these fairy tales as a child, then you are doubly lucky: there are so many beautiful things ahead.

Julia Kuznetsova
Where is Dad?

(Publishing House Meshcheryakov)

Yulia Kuznetsova's story about a 13-year-old girl Lisa, who is waiting for her dad from prison, is being linked by many to the political processes taking place in Russia. But there is no politics at all in the story, and this is all the more important because fathers are imprisoned for various reasons, and children need them equally. There has not been a more poignant story about teenagers in Russian literature for a long time. Desperate loneliness, complexes, relationships with peers and misunderstanding by adults - Yulia Kuznetsova managed to reproduce the whole bunch of emotions of the puberty period so accurately that when reading the story, it’s as if you are flipping through your own diary from the 9th grade. At the same time, it was written in the most honest language, without playing like children: teenagers believe the text, and at meetings with Yulia Kuznetsova they follow her words spellbound and almost fight for autographs. It is worth reading the book with your 13-year-old - in order to better remember how not just a person at this age and how important it is to understand him and help him.

Elena Remizova's illustrations, stylish and concise, deserve special attention.

most up-to-date book

Daria Wilke
Shutovskayacap

(Kick scooter)

Daria Vilke's book "The Shutov's Cap" came out at the same time as the State Duma adopted in the first reading the Law on Prohibition of Propaganda of Homosexuality Among Children and Adolescents. And this is not accidental - in the statement of the publishing house and the author of the book, Daria Vilke, the “homophobic law” is called “barbaric”, and it also says: “... we want Russian readers to stop being afraid of such books, so that they understand that such books are necessary for growing up and that they have long been part of the tradition of world literature for children and adolescents.

But for all the topicality and even opposition, The Shutov's Cap is not an aggressive book at all, but very subtle and lyrical. It is about the theater and theater children, about puppets and swirling yellow leaves, about friendship, for which there are no ages and obstacles, about how to be a jester who is not like the others. She is the boy Grinka, whose friend and idol is forced to leave Russia because of his sexual orientation. About the fact that not at all in the theater, but in life, people put on masks and pretend. And also about what it is really worth protecting children from - from misunderstanding of adults, from labeling and hypocrisy. The book has already been marked as 16+, but it is useful for children from 12 years old to read it, because here are the answers to the most important questions of this age - how to understand yourself, become yourself and not break under the pressure of the outside world.

It’s worth buying the “Shutov’s Cap” as soon as possible - it is not known what fate awaits it after the final adoption of the law, it was specially released in a small edition of 2000 copies “so that there was nothing to seize”.

The best about history

Evgeny Yelchin
Stalin's nose

(Pink giraffe)

Writing an interesting and understandable book about the history of your country for modern children, for whom the USSR is already something far away, is not an easy task. Yevgeny Yelchin coped with it perfectly. One day in the life of the boy Sasha Zaichik, whose father was arrested by the NKVD (also an NKVD officer) is a complete panorama of the feelings of a person living in the totalitarian Soviet Union of 1937-39. A communal apartment, a school, informers, initiation into pioneers, a holy faith in Comrade Stalin - thanks to the look of a child, short chapters, as if from a diary, the reader immediately plunges into a completely seemingly unfamiliar atmosphere with his head and no longer asks “were all such fools?”. Not only the nose of the monument to Comrade Stalin, which Sasha had accidentally broken off, comes to life, history itself comes to life. And although Yevgeny Yelchin, who emigrated from the USSR to the United States back in 1983, wrote the book as if for a foreign reader (the book was published and became popular in many countries of the world), the intonation turned out to be correct: modern children are indeed a bit foreign in relation to their great-grandparents, former first pioneers. Well, judging by the violent reaction of adults to the publication of the book, it is necessary to deal with the history of your country - and 60 years after his death, Stalin is still alive for many of our contemporaries and, judging by the data of the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center, admires a quarter of the population. If our children do not close this gestalt, then who will?

Another book on totalitarianism: Todd Strasser, The Wave (Scooter)

Why did many educated, sane people in Germany in the 1930s and 40s, at best, tacitly disapprove, and some openly supported the fascist regime, genocide, aggression. Today's children, separated from the war by more than one generation, cannot imagine how this can happen.

To explain to high school students what supported fascism in Germany, history teacher Ben Ross starts an experiment in his class - he creates a movement called The Wave. With astonishing obedience, the students join the game. The teacher himself begins to feel like he is imbued with the role of the leader of the movement. A week later ordinary school turns into a small totalitarian republic. The book is based on real events.

The best fairy tales

Roald Dahl
Series "Fairy Tale Factory"

(Kick scooter)

Books by one of the most unusual storytellers in the world, Roald Dahl, have been published in Russia before, especially in the wake of the success of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Fantastic Mr. Fox. But for the first time in Russia, Samokat publishes a truly complete collection of his children's stories, with illustrations by Quentin Blake, the winner of the Andersen Prize in 2002, with whom Dahl worked for several decades. The scary and always unpredictable fairy tales of Roald Dahl work like horror stories about the "black hand" - they keep attention from beginning to end. Adults are always a little afraid of such stories (because of sometimes seeming cruelty and words like “dumbass”), but for children this lack of lisping and absolute freedom of fantasy is just that. Indeed, even from the boring and unfair world of adults (and he often appears as such in Dahl's fairy tales), they can be saved by a giant peach grown in the yard - imagination, faith in miracles and a thirst for adventure.

For children from 6 years old to infinity: behind Dahl's children's books, you can reread his adult creepy and strange stories.

Best Adventure Stories

Christine Nöstlinter
Stories about Franz

(CompassGuide)

Problems of misunderstanding and soul feelings appear in a person not in adolescence, but much earlier. For example, Franz is only 6 years old, but he already has a lot of reasons for suffering - light curls, cherry lips, because of which everyone takes him for a girl; older brothers, from whom you will not expect a word more affectionate than "stupid"; Well, adults, of course, who do not understand his actions and laugh at him. Franz is such a gentle version of the familiar Deniska from Deniska's Tales. Only in Dragunsky most of the stories, even very touching ones, are nevertheless ironic - you read, and chuckle, like an adult or like a friend, over Deniska's adventures and experiences, a little condescendingly. With Franz, a novice reader can have complete self-identification. Because Nöstlinger manages to convey the collision of a small person with the adult world very subtly and truly, in each story showing a small discovery or disappointment. So "Stories about Franz" is a good option for a child's reading initiation: an exciting read, it turns out, does not have to be adventurous or funny. It should be about you. If you get involved - good: the publishing house plans to release a rather long series of stories about a blond bully with a fine mental organization.

The stories were illustrated by one of the best children's artists in Russia - Katya Tolstaya, who knows how to convey tenderness, clumsiness and slight sadness with her drawings like no other.

Best picture book

Mishkin's book

(Boombook)

Behind the "Bear's Book" there is a big, sad and very bright story. But it is not necessary to know it in order to appreciate the book. Picture books have already taken root on our children's bookshelves - it became clear that, in addition to albums with reproductions and photographs, one can also carefully examine and invent stories based on children's books without a single word. So you can come up with a name, a story, an author for each of the cubs on these pages, drawn by dozens of different people from around the world. The book is specially made to seem almost man-made - the bears look like they have just been drawn on rough paper. Almost so, in fact, it was - they were selected for a long time from 600 images and put into suitable pairs by Ksenia Dryzlova, who came up with the project "Mishkin's Book" in memory of her husband. His name was Misha, he collected teddy bears, and he tragically died when he was 24 years old, and his daughter was not yet a year old.

Thanks to Ksyushina's idea, the memory of him moved into hundreds of drawings created by children and adults, first for the Internet project http://www.do-or-die.ru/, and then for the print edition. And so it turned out to be a beautiful, tender and full of kindness book, "Mishkin's book".

The money from its sale will be transferred to the AdVita St. Petersburg Charitable Foundation, which helps children and adults with cancer.

Text: Maria Orlova

Today I will talk about another one of our favorite alphabet - "Working ABC" by Joseph Brodsky. It was from this book that my love for the works of Igor Oleinikov began. Here several components were combined at once, which led to success - excellent printing, an immortal poet and a wonderful artist.

Joseph Brodsky wrote the "Working ABC" when he was a little over twenty years old. In poetic form Nobel Laureate describes various professions. Poems Joseph Brodsky wrote not entirely at the behest of the muses, but to earn extra money. Therefore, descriptions of professions can be quite absurd and seemingly incomprehensible to children.
But above all, The Working Alphabet is an artist's book. Incredible illustrations for it were made by Igor Oleinikov, an artist and animator, winner of the Bologna Book Exhibition. The "working alphabet" is not just an alphabet for professions, but also a game book: on each page you need to find objects with the corresponding letter. The drawings gush with humor and originality: a combination of incongruous things subordinated to a harmonious row of letters of the Russian alphabet.

Here you have Aunt Agronomist with a huge Apricot