TOY TIME
A rare contemporary English translation of this work by the celebrated Russian poet, children's author and wartime journalist.
Very good plus.
Price: $200.00
TOY TIME
"You'll march on foot when you get older<br />With May's red flag upon your shoulder."
Illustrated children's verses, including five songs set to music. A gentle fantasia whose nursery atmosphere gives way to "March brigades / On parade". Originally published as Игрушки ("Toys") in 1936, TOY TIME's success significantly increased Barto's fame and popularity; she was later a recipient of the Hans Christian Andersen Medal as well as the Order of Lenin, the Stalin Prize, and numerous other civilian honors conferred by the Soviet Union. In addition to her work for children, she wrote anti-Nazi poetry and was a Western Front correspondent during World War II. With illustrations by Koznetsov, characteristic of the period: "Soviet children's book design of the 1920s and 1930s is the acme of all design before and after… books in which an absolute balance between message and image has been found" (Arkady Ippolitov).
English rendering by Herbert Marshall, a British-born professor of Soviet literature and co-writer of the original story for the Paul Robeson film THE PROUD VALLEY, conceived along uncompromisingly Marxist lines but recut to water down its pro-worker sentiments. Marshall lived in Moscow between 1935 and 1937, when this rare translation was most likely completed.
Read more: Brooks, The Firebird and the Fox: Part III - The Bolshevik Revolution and the Arts (1917-1950); Rothenstein, Ippolitiv et al., Inside the Rainbow: Russian Children's Lierature 1920-1935: Beautiful Books, Terrible Times.
The Object
Moscow: Mejdunarodnaya Kniga, [circa 1936]. 11.25'' x 8.75''. Original saddle-stapled pictorial wrappers. Color illustrations on every page by Kouznetsov. Musical notation printed on final two pages and rear cover. [8] leaves, including wrappers. Light cover soil; minor scuffs and creases to wrappers.
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