The liberal Swedish model may be shocking; well, perhaps they should invent an “18 minus” sign for Swedish children’s books – only for minors. Or perhaps it would be better to label these texts with a “must read for adults too” sticker - they must learn to respect the child’s right to be different from everyone else.
Sparkling stories about a girl with carrot-colored hair were written in the late 1940s - and still remain an unsurpassed standard of children's literature of modern times, and Pippi herself - for foreigners, at least - has completely turned into a symbol of Sweden, something like Marianne for France. The figure in multi-colored stockings looks, to put it mildly, contradictory: on the one hand, the embodiment of the Scandinavian love of freedom, every replica is a declaration of independence, on the other hand, perhaps this Marianna could use the attention of the children's ombudsman, especially in those moments when she begins to propose for peers to try, for example, fly agarics. With her Brünnhilde powers, Pippi looks either like a superheroine from comic books (very Swedish, not Marvel or disish; although she obviously wouldn’t get lost in those), or like a bomb - and far from a slow-acting one. The idea of raising an obedient child with this shocking book, in a good way, is best left alone. But - almost guaranteed - it can be used to raise a person who takes the idea of equal rights for men and women very seriously; for that matter, it is after reading Pippi that even adult men turn into convinced feminists.
Illustrator and writer Sven Nordkvist is the creator of, quite possibly, the best cat in world literature: smart, touching, naughty, like a pet child, to whom any hooliganism is forgiven. And although the main supplier of plots is Findus, what is more important here is the atmosphere, for which the cat’s patron and supervisor, the eccentric farmer Petson, is responsible. Petson is a jack of all trades, he tries not to buy anything new, but uses, reimagines and reinvents old things. Books about this couple are expeditions into a world that is unique in modern times, where handmade production is undoubtedly more attractive than factory, mass production, and where primitive old long-lasting things turn out to be more valuable than high-tech disposable ones. The books convey a sense of environmental friendliness: village technologies make the world renewable - and deserving of love, and not just consumption. Witty commentators of the Nurdquist cycle even called Petson a term from the anthropologist Lévi-Strauss: “bricoleur” is an independently thinking, technically competent person who is not dependent on other people’s raw materials. Moreover, he is the bearer of many other qualities that are usually attributed to the Swedes: self-sufficiency, independence, independent thinking and the ability to create comfort. But the reward for all these merits is royal: the best cat-child in the world.
A large-scale mystical novel about a group of high school girls whose psychic abilities and competence in esoteric practices can, in terms of diversity, be compared only with their problems in the sphere of their personal lives. Inhabitants of a depressed town, where the amount of alcohol consumed per capita is much higher than average, they live in constant stress - and are forced to either disenchant ancient symbols or investigate the suspicious suicide of their peer. There are many moments in the book when the infernal atmosphere thickens to such an extent that it seems to be cut into pieces like butter. The puzzling combination of a school story, a youth detective story and a mystical thriller (on the one hand, chemistry tests, bullying of classmates and obsession with sex, on the other - fortune telling, training, prophecies, magical exercises) looks bright and refreshing. By the way, “The Circle” (Circle of Power, which includes the Chosen Ones) is only the first novel from the whole “Engelsfors” series, created by a duo of Swedish writers (Strandberg is a famous journalist, Elfgren is a screenwriter). These schoolgirl witches will have to save the world from destruction more than once, and the battle between good and evil is far from the last.
Winner of the award named after his namesake, Barbro Lindgren has a remarkable imagination, and the best evidence of this is the story with the metallophonic title “Loranga...”. This is not so much a complete story as a randomly selected fragment from the life of one cheerful family: Mazarin is a boy, Loranga is his father, and Dartagnan is Loranga’s grandfather. “Loranga” is a world where age differences, boundaries between people and animals, animate and inanimate objects are blurred. Here there are herds of tigers and post-eating giraffes, at the Russia-Canada hockey match they play with mops and tomatoes, and the characters exchange remarks like “I’m not a plumber, I’m an Indian Deerfoot” or “I have such a high temperature that the thermometer burst in half " The world of Lorangi is a space where most physical laws do not work, formal logic is abolished, and contradiction ceases to be a problem. People and objects bump into each other - precisely on purpose: since there is a contradiction, there is life and movement, dynamics and energy, cheerful madness. All this constructive detachment, it turns out, translates perfectly into Russian, at least thanks to the translation, which contains, for example, “chocolate spundig with fluffy boobs” and the disease “lairingitis” (when you bark like a dog all the time). "Loranga" is reminiscent of the Swedish version of Chukovsky's "Confusion"; and also, perhaps, color cinema, as the very first viewers saw it; as the philologist Shklovsky put it about him, “an enraged landrin.”
The patriarch of the detective genre, creator of the Kurt Wallander series and one of the main moral authorities in Sweden, Henning Mankell was also a wonderful children's writer. A monument to such Mankell is a cycle about a boy-dreamer Euel Gustafson (“Running to the Stars,” “Shadows Grow at Twilight,” “A Boy Sleeping on a Snowy Bed,” “Journey to the End of the World”). Similar to the “Krapivino boys,” Yuel lives in a cold northern town, but thanks to his ability to not pay attention to the difference between reality and fantasy, he has already become accustomed to the lack of heat - both in terms of climate and in terms of family communication. Yuel has no mother, but he has a father and friends - real and imaginary, and also his own secret society, a logbook and a bunch of amazing neighbors - like Noseless or Bricklayer Urweder, who rides in a truck at night, crosses out unsuccessful fragments from books, rewrites them and looks at the world through “thinking glasses.” The melancholic prose about a not-so-happy teenager who experiences a phantom nostalgia for the romance of the sea and amuses himself with excursions to a rocky chasm - where one can imagine oneself in a deep tunnel at the center of the Earth - is a good antidote for those who think that Swedish children's literature is forever reigning a cheerful mess, like in “Carlson”. There are exceptions - and very impressive ones.
“Nils” was written at the request of the National Association of Teachers - as an entertaining, fairy tale-style guide to the geography of Sweden.
There is plenty of magic in this story: and it is much more difficult to explain not how a boy could shrink to the size of a cucumber and fly around Sweden on a goose - but how such a purely local project managed to turn into an international bestseller, and Nils - to become a classic character in world children's literature.
Perhaps Niels's case seemed typical to readers from many countries at the beginning of the twentieth century: the story of a simpleton who at first knew nothing but his own court, and then discovered the territories belonging to the nation-family, in the broad sense, a large national state, - and transformed, grew - both mentally and physically. It is interesting that Lagerlöf's Sweden is not just a space of living and inanimate nature outlined by boundaries, but also essentially a realized utopia: a democratic country with rich natural diversity, in which creatures of different biological species and degrees of reality: from geese to a king, from a gnome to a monument - are able to find a common language and cooperate with each other.
A teenage drama about the lives of girls born in disadvantaged areas, in single-parent and unhappy families. They suffer from the hysterics of roaming parents and bullying from cruel classmates, from jealousy and loneliness. The title of the novel is taken from a seductive, dangerous and unscrupulous game of teenagers, the participants of which either agree to answer an awkward question truthfully - or, if they refuse, are obliged to complete any task invented for them, making them blush even more. This voluntary game of executioners and victims by children turns out to be not so much funny as heartbreaking. The game is a good metaphor for life: already at the age of 12, the heroines have to learn - from their own mistakes - to make obviously bad choices in circumstances where there is no good solution. Some excess of naturalistically described physiological details of growing up may cause allergies in readers; Well, the truth is often unpleasant, and sometimes society needs more than just fun and entertainment. So it was with the famous “Scarecrow” by Zheleznikov, and with Annika Thor’s book. A cruel and sentimental book at the same time: an illustration of the reality in which people - even children - are not too ready to listen to each other. August Strindberg Prize for 1997.
Terribly fascinating for children - and causing well-deserved applause from adults - a fable about a 4-year-old girl who turns out to be radically wiser than is typical for creatures her age. Like Hermannmelville’s scribe Bartleby, who answered “I would prefer to refuse” to all proposals, Gittan at first avoids any contact with anything in the slightest degree strange in the world, but at a critical moment he gets together - and does everything as it should, better than anyone; and even the dire wolves seem funny next to her. If not a prototype, then a relative of this wise girl-philosopher is Mashenka from “The Three Bears”. At the same time, very “Swedish” conclusions can be drawn from the tale of Gittan: even the most objectively inevitable conflicts are resolved, and unhurried, reasonable and self-confident people can achieve more than loudmouths and braggarts. “Gittan” is richly illustrated, and by the narrator herself - who, by the way, came up with what not only her heroine looks like, but also, for example, Tsatsiki and his mother in the books of Monya Nilsson-Bränström. In 2000, Gittan received the Swedish National Literary Prize. “Instant classic” – kind of like “The Gruffalo” in England.
The image of a flying barrel brings together the ideas of readers of all ages about how an ideal imaginary friend should look and behave: an eccentric, has paranormal abilities, capricious, capable of putting anyone in their place - and restoring hope in the most desperate circumstances. They got used to Carlson - but he is still, perhaps, the most unusual fantasy of Astrid Lindgren; and this man-in-his-prime is far from being as simple as he seems. He fights domestic violence, effectively mediates between fathers and children, wittily ridicules society's obsession with new technologies (a scene of stealing buns from a table using a vacuum cleaner) and excessive bourgeoisism. His self-construction on the roof is the last frontier, where domestic, artisanal culture, isolated from the world, holds the defense against the advancing mass culture - globalized, multi-apartment and multi-antenna. As for Russia and the countries of the former USSR, where “Carlson” penetrated into folklore and was widely quoted as “Woe from Wit,” it is possible that in Soviet times this book was also perceived as a veiled satire on the state’s obsession with the Big Space Project. Carlson may not have overcome gravity, but somehow outwitted it - and flies not for vague scientific purposes, but for purely personal and undeniably important matters; just a private initiative, yes - but also, in its own way, “the time of the first.”
Tzatziki is the Swedish analogue of “Little Nicolas” and Greg from “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”: a funny book for both children and parents about how an 8-9 year old child is looking for a way to interact with the world, and adults would be happy, but often they themselves are not they know how to help him with this - and when they intervene, they look even funnier than the child himself. The cycle is replete with episodes, one more eccentric than the other. Mom runs around in a tutu, pretending to be a dying swan, and her son runs after her with a toy gun - for a woman who plays bass in a rock band and names her son, born to a Greek dad, named Cuttlecatcher, after Greek sauce , – the eccentricity is quite plausible. “Tzatziki” is also of purely ethnographic interest - it allows you to find out how the heads of Swedish children work, how they react to extravagant adults and what they do in sensitive moments - for example, when they stole an umbrella from an imaginary foreign spy and now do not know how to return the thing back so as not to feel like thieves. Plus, the frankness of some scenes here is purely Swedish - sometimes off the charts: parents and children together, almost blindly, groping for where the line between freedom and irresponsibility lies and how to treat those you don’t understand - after all, tolerance in words and in deeds are completely different things .
Modern classics of the “zero plus” category. The main characters are sheep (or rams?), but they live in a normal human house that looks like an Ikea room. Be and Me decide to do some spring cleaning, but in the process they realize that, due to their innate naivety, they are not competent enough in handling household appliances. Their vacuum cleaner, which has entered into an alliance with the draft, sucks up important things - but also blows out all the dust, so that readers are treated to a happy ending and an idyllic scene of drinking milk. (In the latter, by the way, a typically Swedish feeling of comfort is conveyed: even the sound of a fall is conveyed here in a very special way, not like we do - “FLUPS” is a word). A lot of words could be spent on the plot about the epic collision of the animal and man-made world, nature and civilization - but, as in any good example of modern children's literature, there is more showing than telling. Olof and Lena Landström, artists, know a lot about this.
Pernilla Stalfelt has become famous for her amazing illustrated encyclopedias, where she teaches children and teenagers about the issues that their own parents tend to sweep under the rug: death, love, sex and all that. Instead of beating around the bush, the writer calls a spade a spade, maintaining an appropriate balance of decisiveness and delicacy. Why remain silent about death in a rag - why not remember that this is also an opportunity to become a scary skeleton and scare people? You can also turn into a vampire - like one of the characters whose afterlife career was overshadowed by the fact that when he tried to bite a certain lady, thousands of mosquitoes flew at him and sucked the blood out of him. Some recommendations regarding behavior in difficult cases look useful even for adults. Love and death do not fit into any schemes - but it’s all the more fun, Stalfelt reasoned, to try to make them up. Hence the funny pictures illustrating the consequences of love (for example, jealousy) - or, for example, variations of phrases that can be used for messages about death (“God took Matilda away” - or “threw away her skates”). A good example, in a word, of Swedish relaxedness and informal attitude towards taboo sectors of life - without familiarity, familiarity and blasphemy.
Kalle is an observant 13-year-old boy, a true academician in the field of criminology, always ready to demonstrate his mastery of the skills gleaned from books in practice. In addition to conversations in bandit language, the war of the Scarlet and White Rose groups, spying on adults, the hunt for important clues (“traces of arsenic stuck to particles of chocolate” and all that) and other standards of a teenage adventure novel, there are also real murders, so , in essence, this is a classic detective procedural. However, the reader should take into account that the main characters: Kalle and his best friends Anders and Eva-Lotta - who talk very maturely and are well versed in psychology - are constantly faced with the need to go to bed on time, eat cutlets with compote and observe all other age requirements regulations and conventions. Hence the main source of the charm of this series: the ambiguity of where the game ends and where life begins.
"Kalle Blumkvist" for a new generation: a more modern-looking detective series about juvenile detectives in the small, hermetic town of Valleby. There are two children, they are younger than the patriarch of the genre - Calle, but they have their own detective agency "Lasse-Maia" - not in honor of the famous robber of the 19th century, but after the names of the owners. Lasse and Maya time after time turn out to be, if not more intelligent, then certainly more observant than adults - a well-known paradox often exploited by children's authors. Only children can get a job in the store where the crime occurred in order to learn the ins and outs of the business. Only children can pay attention to the fact that a real Egyptian mummy is unlikely to demand a ransom of 5 million crowns. Only children know how to effectively restore temporarily disrupted rational order and cope with chaos. Precisely chaos; real Evil, which the authors of “adult” Swedish detective stories love so much, is completely absent here. Short books - for one evening of reading; and have a good evening! It is important that “Affairs” look like stories with comics for teenagers, fashionable in recent years - equipped with plans, funny diagrams, algorithms and other useful drawings.
“Dystopia for the little ones” in the annotation implies that this is a witty parody of something that is extremely rarely parodied: society’s fear of the word “totalitarianism” and concern for the slightest signs of political dictatorship. The tragedy of the twentieth century is repeated in this small, rhythmic text (“Then the dictator sits down on the ground, leaning against a pine tree. It’s hard to decide everything for everyone.”) the text is not so much even a farce, but rather a finely orchestrated comic performance. The dictator here is a small child who feels like the center of the world in a loving family - and the supreme ruler: after all, he has to decide (for everyone!), who should do what, how those around him should please him, and when to have a pillow war, and when to make phone calls. practical jokes. Children are, indeed, tyrants; and if so, why not fantasize about the problem of protecting the civil rights of parents - only partly as a joke; after all, as in the case of “real” dictators, people develop not only hatred, but also love for authoritarian rulers. The piquant political ambiguity of this simple story tickles the nostrils - and turns it into real literature.
I experienced my first delight when I read the trilogy “Baby and Carlson” by the Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren. A sea of funny situations, elegant style and rich imagination of the author delighted and captivated. Then it was time for the fairy tale "Pippi Longstocking". But the fairy tale “Mio, my Mio” captivated my heart forever. I was sad and cried with little Busse, dreamed of a horse as beautiful as Mio’s and to perform feats in the name of good with him. Astrid Lindgren has become my favorite writer. Almost all of her books are dedicated to children. “I have not written books for adults and I think that I will never do so,” the writer once said decisively. All the heroes she created are lively, active and mischievous children with their own talents and whims, inclinations and weaknesses. This is exactly what they are - Mio, Pippi, Kalle, Yeran, little Cherven.
The writer talks truthfully and seriously with children. Yes, the world is not simple, there are diseases, poverty, hunger, grief and suffering in the world. In her fairy tale “In the Land Between Light and Darkness,” the boy Yeran has not gotten out of bed for a year because of a sore leg, but every evening he finds himself in the magical Land of Twilight, or as it is also called, the Land Between Light and Darkness. Unusual people live in this country. Anything can be in it - caramels grow on trees, and trams run on water. And most importantly, neither illness nor suffering “have the slightest meaning” in it.
Children, according to Lindgren, should be happy. They should have their own Far Country, the Country of Twilight or the island of Siltkrona. Children should play, laugh, enjoy life and should never get sick or go hungry. For Lindgren, the fabulous and magical is born from the imagination of the child himself. So the Kid from the books about “The Kid and Carlson” comes up with a cheerful friend who lives on the roof and loves jam, Pippi Longstocking from the fairy tale of the same name, considers himself a black princess and imagines himself to be a rich, strong and beloved girl.
The fairy tale “Mio, my Mio!” was born in 1954. One day, while walking through the square, the writer noticed a little sad boy sitting alone and sadly on a bench. That was enough. He sat and was sad, and Lindgren had already transported him to the fairy tale The Far Country, which he himself invented, surrounded him with blooming roses, found him a loving father and cheerful, devoted friends, and involved him in many adventures, and in his dreams the adopted son Busse becomes Prince Mio, the beloved son of the king of the Far Country. my favorite fairy tale, full of poetry and charm.
Thorbjorn Egner is a special phenomenon in Norwegian literature. He not only wrote interesting books for children, but also translated for Norwegian children the famous English fairy tale by A. A. Milne about the teddy bear Nalla Poo (known to Russian children as Winnie the Pooh). Egner not only introduced his little compatriots to the English teddy bear, but also wrote for them the fairy tale “Adventures in the Woods of Elki-on-Gorka”, about the living bear cub Grumpy, Mouse Morten, Climbing Mouse, House Mouse, Fox Mikkel, squirrels and other inhabitants Elki-on-Gorka forests. In the fairy tale, animals talk and behave like people. There are good and kind animals - the bear Bamse, his family and many small animals, there are cunning and evil ones - Mikkel the Fox and Peter the Hedgehog. Angry at the Fox and the Hedgehog, who were attacking small animals, the inhabitants of the forest gathered together and made a promise to live in friendship and harmony. The fox does not want to eat grass and berries, but he is forced to do so and raise his hind paw as a sign of consent. The fox gradually improves and even saves the little bear Grumpy. The book “Adventures in the Forest of Elki-on-Gorka” is a very funny and life-affirming fairy tale. And its meaning is in the song of animals who decided to live in peace and friendship:
Let's divide everything in half -
Joys and troubles
And delicious
Delicious,
Delicious lunches.
The fairy tale contains many animal songs that Enger composed. And he not only writes interesting fairy tales and composes songs, but also illustrates his books.
In the summer of 1966, the Finnish writer and artist Tove Marika Jansson received the International Hans Christian Andersen Gold Medal for her books about extraordinary fairy-tale creatures - Moomins, hemuls, fillyjonks, homs, snorks, morrahs, etc. This highest award is awarded to writers and artists who who write and draw for children. Tove Jansson will later have many awards and prizes, but this medal will become the most valuable for her. In 1938, Tove Jansson wrote and illustrated the book Little Trolls and the Great Flood. Then 11 more books about the Moomins: “A Comet Arrives” (1946); "The Wizard's Hat" (1949); "Memoirs of Moomintroll Dad" (1950); “What happened then?” (1952); "Dangerous Summer" (1954); "Magic Winter" (1957); “Who will console the little one?” (1960); "The Invisible Child" (1962); "Daddy and the Sea" (1965); "At the End of November" (1970); "The Rascal in the Moomin House" (1980). All these books have been translated into 25 languages, including Russian. Each of Jansson’s works is the embodiment of one or another child’s aspirations: passion for the mysterious and magical (“A Comet Arrives,” “The Wizard’s Hat”), for construction and invention (“Memoirs of Moomintroll Dad”), kindness and love for the weak (“ Magical Winter”, “The Invisible Child”), curiosity and a penchant for play and transformation (“Dangerous Summer”).
Astrit Lindgren, Thorbjörn Egner and Tove Jansson brought into the literary fairy tale the whole country of childhood with all its psychological shades, desires, aspirations and fantasies. And they did it so talentedly that they forced everyone to admit: there are children's books that belong to real literature. And many will agree with my opinion that best children's books belong to these magnificent Scandinavian writers.
Happy reading!
Swedish children, of course, read the works of Russia's beloved Astrid Lindgren from a very early age. For them, her main books remain “Pippi Longstocking”, “The Lionheart Brothers” and “Mio, My Mio” . It is no coincidence that the main storyteller was born in Sweden, where the children's literature market is thriving, and a large number of interesting works by talented authors are published every year.
Elsa Beskow is a true classic of Swedish children's literature. Many Swedes learned to read and write using the Beskov ABC book. It was she, along with English authors such as Kate Greenaway, Randolph Caldecott and Beatrix Potter, who stood at the origins of the picture book: a work where text and illustrations have equal rights and perform a complementary function (although there are variations).
In 2016, the Azbuka publishing house published several collections with translations of Besk’s main works; the last time there was such a boom was almost a century ago. For example, a 1903 publication is known: the Beskov fairy tale “The Adventures of the Kid in the Blueberry Forest” in the Russian retelling was called “The Blueberry Grandfather” (you can look through it). The fate of this work in Poland is interesting. Also in 1903, a book with illustrations by Beskow was published, the text of which was rewritten by a Polish writer. Elsa Beskow's name was not on the cover at all. The work, however, became so popular that it was included in the compulsory school curriculum. Only in the 1950s. New illustrations were created, and the book finally ceased to have anything to do with Beskov.
Perhaps the most famous works of Elsa Beskow in Sweden are a series about the adventures of “colored” aunts. In the original, their names are: Aunt Green, Aunt Brown and Aunt Lilac, in addition, another hero appears in the books - Uncle Blue. It is clear that in Russian the literal translation of the names looks strange, and the translator Olga Myaeots calls the heroines this way: Aunt Pear, Aunt Cinnamon and Aunt Violet, and Uncle becomes Blueberry. Beskow is still so popular in Sweden that her illustrations adorn collections of homewares that quickly sell out in stores.
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Josta Knutsson was educated at the university in Uppsala and lived there most of his life. He worked on radio, where in 1938 he launched an intellectual quiz for the first time in Sweden - a genre that gained unprecedented popularity - it even began to be called the special term “question sport”.
In 1939, the first book about Knutsson’s main character, the cat Pella Tailless, was published. There is not a Swedish child who has not heard of this touching character. In 1997, a special series for Christmas was released, based on the works of Pella the Tailless - a form of the highest popular recognition. In Russian, “The Adventures of Tailless Pelle” was published by the publishing house “Planet of Childhood” translated by Sergei Stern. Knutsson himself was not only a writer, but also a translator: in 1945, Lewis Carroll's books about Alice were published in Swedish in his translation.
Another important hero of Josta Knutsson is the teddy bear Lufs, works about which have not yet been published in Russian.
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An absolute classic for older children - Maria Gripe. She has written 36 books for teenagers, which have been translated into more than 30 world languages. Gripe's works were also lucky with translations into Russian. In the last few years, the publishing house “Albus corvus” has re-published several books, including in new translations.
You can start getting acquainted with the writer’s work with a book about the boy Elvis Carlson. Gripe wrote five books about him - all thanks to her husband Harald, who illustrated almost all of her works. The writer was interested in the image of a boy made by her husband for another book, and she decided to come up with a separate story with him as the main character. This is how books about a touching boy with the name of a pop star appeared. You can read more about the writer’s work on the blog of the VGIBL Children’s Hall.
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Barbro is not a relative of the world-famous Swedish storyteller, but they still had something in common. In one interview, Barbro said that when she was 13 years old, she wrote her first children's book and decided to send it as a gift to her favorite writer, Astrid Lindgren. The book came back, but with a cover letter in which Astrid said that first books are rarely successful and there is no need to be upset. At the age of 20, Barbro wrote several new chapters and sent them back to Astrid, this time asking whether she should continue at all. Astrid Lindgren answered again. She wrote that she saw potential in the material she had received, but that Barbre needed to study a little to begin composing for real. Astrid gave the aspiring writer some advice. Barbro kept this letter for the rest of her life and repeatedly stated that it was a most valuable guide and her main textbook.
Perhaps Barbro's most famous books are a series of little books about Max, written in "children's" language, with simplified grammar and syntax, literally three words per page. The books in the series were published in Russian by the Samokat publishing house, translated by Maria Lyudkovskaya. In Sweden, they gained popularity largely thanks to the illustrations of Eva Erikson. Interestingly, in 1991, Barbra and Eva published, as they themselves put it, the first Swedish children's book for adults. It was a book about Max growing up and was called “Max and the Grave.” It retained the simplified grammatical and syntactic structure of the original books in the series and told about how Max works in a bank and watches TV.
In 2014, the Albus corvus publishing house released another picture book by Barbra Lindgren, “Where is everyone?” also translated by Maria Lyudkovskaya. It tells the story of a boy who gets lost in a shopping mall and almost gets scared.
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Another Swedish writer associated with Astrid Lindgren, but this time indirectly. Christina Bjork is the author of a picture book, but in fact a real literary study about the writer’s childhood, called “The Adventures of Astrid, Before She Became Astrid Lindgren.” The illustrations for this book were created by the same Eva Eriksson.
In addition, Björk became the author of another excellent literary picture book - about Lewis Carroll's Alice. This book was published in Russian, translated by Nina Demurova, in 2002 by the Vita Nova publishing house and, unfortunately, has not been reprinted since then. And in 2016, the publishing house “Albus corvus” finally released Björk’s main book, translated by Elena Dorofeeva, “Linnaeus in the Artist’s Garden.” The picture book details the impressionist artist Claude Monet. The original was published back in 1985 - and it was this book that brought real fame to the writer. The success of the book owes much to the beautiful illustrations made by Lena Anderson. Björk and Anderson met in 1958 while working at a women's magazine, and this began a long and productive collaboration, which would be more accurately called co-creation. The prototype of the heroine named Linnea, who made the duet famous, was Anderson’s daughter Nikolina. The heroine's name was not chosen by chance. The fact is that Linnea is very fond of plants and nature - just like the famous Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus, the creator of a unified system for classifying flora and fauna.
After the worldwide success of “Linnaeus in the Artist’s Garden,” publishers from different countries were eager to continue the series: they hoped for the publication of books about other masters. However, Björk writes exclusively on topics that interest her. Monet was interesting to her, the others were not, so “Linnea in the Artist’s Garden” is one of a kind.
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Ulf Nilsson is one of the extremely productive Swedish writers - he has written more than 100 works for children and teenagers. He is known for his honest approach to complex, “not childish” topics. His most popular works teach children about death. This is a picture book, not published in Russia, awarded the August Prize, “Goodbye, Mr. Muffin” - about the death of a guinea pig.
In 2007, the Samokat publishing house published the book “The Kindest in the World” translated by Alexandra Polivanova. It is noteworthy that in Swedish the book is called “Alla döda små djur”, which literally means “All the dead little animals” - it is clear that with such a name the book would be more difficult to sell in Russia. It tells the story of children who decide one fine summer day to open a funeral home for animals. Interestingly, Astrid Lindgren’s first story, published in a newspaper in the town of Vimmerby in 1921, also told about children who decided to play funeral home and bury a rat “properly”, and then do something completely different. After this publication, Lindgren was called “Selma Lagerlöf from Vimmerby.”
In 2016, the Samokat publishing house published picture books “Alone on the Stage” and “A Day with the Mouse Fire Brigade” translated by Maria Lapteva, as well as “Alone in the Whole World” translated by Maria Lyudkovskaya.
Ulf Nilsson is also the author of a popular detective series for teenagers in Sweden, which was not published in Russian.
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Ulf Stark, who died untimely in June of this year, is one of the most beloved contemporary children's writers in Russia. Including his works, a wave of interest in Swedish literature for children began in the 00s. In Sweden, he gained fame thanks to the 1984 novel “Weirdos and Bores,” which was published for the fifth time in 2016 by the Samokat publishing house, translated by Olga Mäeots. This is a touching, Stark-like, witty and honest story about a girl, Simone, who is mistaken for a boy at her new school. It is interesting that there is no literature in Swedish schools - reading is included in the Swedish language program. Textbooks for 6th grade include excerpts from this work by Stark. But you can take any book from Ulf Stark - you won’t miss it.
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For 20 years, Juja Wislander and her husband Tumas have been collecting and recording children's songs. The result of the work was records on which songs were performed by two heroes - Mama Mu and the raven, whose name was translated into Russian as Krax. The success was amazing, and soon books about the heroes began to be published, illustrations for which were drawn by Sven Nordqvist. Wislander is a member of the Swedish Academy of Children's Books.
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Petson and Findus are known, it seems, to almost everyone: over the last decade, stories about their cozy life have become an integral part of Russian childhood. However, Nordqvist is also known for his educational books, which are published in Russian. The latest book published by Albus corvus was the book by Nordkvist and Mats Wahl, “Vasa Goes to Sea!” translated by Ekaterina Chevkina. This is the story of a huge ship from the 17th century. “Vasa”, which sank almost immediately after setting sail due to engineering errors made during construction. The ship lay on the seabed until the 1950s, when private explorer Anders Franzen began searching for it. In 1956, using a specially invented device, he took out a small piece of wood from the water, which turned out to be part of the ship. And the ship itself was raised from the bottom only on April 24, 1961. Now everyone can come to the Vasa Museum on the island of Djurgården in Stockholm - or read Nordkvist’s book about this amazing story.
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Stefan Casta
Since 2011, the KompasGid publishing house has published Stefan Casta’s novels for teenagers translated by Maria Konobeeva: “Pretending to be Dead,” “The Summer of Marie-Lou,” and “The Green Circle.” But in his homeland, Casta is known rather for his other books.
In Sweden, the non-fiction genre for children is very popular: there are illustrated books on any topic (even, for example, about poop). There are especially many publications about nature. Swedes spend a lot of time outside from a young age: during school recess you should definitely go for a walk. There is even a saying in Swedish that never gets tired of being repeated: “There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.” Swedish children have a good understanding of flowers, mushrooms, trees and butterflies. This is no coincidence: firstly, they constantly look at all this through a magnifying glass (starting from kindergarten), and secondly, they read all kinds of books about nature. Now we too can join the Swedish non-fiction about nature: since 2015, the Albus corvus publishing house has been publishing a series about the inquisitive ant Sophie, translated by Irina Matytsina. Sophie explores the world of flowers, trees, berries and mushrooms - it’s impossible to tear yourself away. Take books with you and go look at this beauty in the forest.
So, the first eight children's writers who come to mind when we say “Scandinavia”. I don’t think Hans Christian Andersen :)
Of course, number one will be Astrid Lindgren. I think no one needs to introduce her :)
By the way, Carlson, who is so popular in our country, is not so loved in other countries. Even in his homeland he is considered an eccentric, selfish liar, so the author’s words that there is “something Russian” in this hero cannot but cause alarm.
Shall we go further through Sweden?
Selma Ottilie Luvisa Lagerlöf, the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature and the third woman ever to receive it, is best known to us as the author of Nils's Amazing Journey with the Wild Geese. By the way, she donated her gold medal to the Swedish National Fund for Relief of Finland for the war with the USSR.
The writer's portrait has been featured on the 20 Swedish krona banknote since 1991:
Jan Olaf Ekholm, known to us for the fairy tale “Tutta Karlsson the First and Only, Ludwig the Fourteenth and Others.” , which became the basis for the Soviet film “Red Honest Lover,” he mainly wrote detective stories. In 1975 he was elected chairman of the Swedish Detective Academy, and two years later he became one of the founders of the Stockholm Crime Writers Association.
Another Swede, Sven Nordkvist, a writer and artist, is famous for his series about the old farmer Petson and his smart kitten Findus. At the very beginning of his career, Sven decided to take part in an illustrator competition, but he did not want to draw pictures for other people’s works and wrote a book himself.
Annika Thor, whose tetralogy about Jewish sisters who fled from Nazi Vienna to the Gothenburg skerries, was only recently (and not completely - there is no last book yet) translated into Russian, rightfully takes a place among Swedish writers, authors of the best books for children and youth . Her works tell about life in wartime Europe without excessive sentimentality, but at the same time touching and objective.
Let's turn our gaze a little further north, to Norway.
Its native Anne-Katrina Westley not only wrote books (56 works that were translated into 16 languages), but also acted in films. By the way, she played a grandmother in the film adaptation of her own series “Mom, Dad, Eight Children and a Truck,” after which she received the affectionate nickname “grandmother of all Norwegians.”
Sweden's other neighbor, Finland, was once part of the Russian Empire. Therefore, the next author is a little, but ours :)
It would be too long to list the awards received by the creator of the Moomins, Tove Jansson, but one cannot help but say that she always emphasized that she was an artist and took writing rather frivolously. However, the place of the graduate of the Swedish Academy of Arts in history was aptly defined at her funeral (due to which national mourning was declared) by the president of the country: “The work of Tove Jansson is Finland’s greatest contribution to the world treasury of culture after Kalevala and Sibelius.”
They say that income from the sale of products exploiting the image of the Moomins makes up the same part of the Finnish state budget as the tax deductions from the Nokia corporation.
Jansson's compatriot Marcus Majaluoma, a UNICEF award winner, is less known among us. He is also not only a writer, but also an illustrator.
Of his works for children, the best known is a series of books about his father, Pentti Rozoholmainen, and his three children, Ossi, Veino and Anna-Marie. Two of them (“Papa, when will Santa Claus come?” and “Papa, let’s go pick mushrooms!”) were translated into Russian.
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The phrase “Scandinavian children’s literature” has been on everyone’s lips for a long time and is perceived completely harmoniously. We have all known the books of Astrid Lindgren and Tove Jansson almost since childhood and are happy to pass on our love for them to our children. Did you know that on the birthday of the great Danish storyteller Hans Christian Andersen, April 2, a children's book holiday has been celebrated all over the world since 1967?
My love for the Scandinavian countries and their art is special. My mother has been living in Norway for many years, and I myself graduated from college with a diploma in Scandinavian children's books. I wholeheartedly love Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Finnish literature for children and even collect a small collection of particularly wonderful authors. Writers from the cold Nordic countries have, in my opinion, one very strong and unique feature - they can boldly and without embellishment talk about real incidents in life. About what can happen to people - big and small, about how you can and should overcome obstacles and adversity, about the fact that all people have their right to make mistakes. These fairy tales are not at all like the ones we are used to: where princesses wait for princes, where everything magically suddenly changes in an instant, turning into something beautiful and completely incredible. For the Scandinavians, everything is much cleaner, simpler, closer to real life. This is what attracts me. It seems to me that our children, and ourselves, really lack this truth. Truth since childhood. The realization that anything can happen in life, but there are no unsolvable troubles. You just need to cultivate perseverance, love of life and resilience, as well as love, understanding and compassion.
When I first learned to read, the first book for me was “Adventures in the Forest of Fir-trees on the Hill” by Thorbjörn Egner. Then, of course, I re-read everything that I found from Astrid Lindgren and Tove Jansson, and the fairy tales of Scandinavian writers in all the collections that I came across in libraries. Mysterious and dark stories about trolls fascinated me. Already at the institute, I again became interested in children's books, and discovered modern Norwegian and Swedish authors such as Maria Parr, Ulf Stark and Moni Nilsson-Brenström. They settled deeply in my heart, and I don’t even regret that I read their works as an adult. Funny stories about Samson and Roberto Ingvar Abjernsen will also seem fascinating to both adults and children. And, in conclusion: “Tutta Carlson, the first and only” by the Swedish writer Jan Olof Ekholm and “Dad, Mom, Eight Children and a Truck” by the Norwegian Anna Katharina Westli.
I hope you will be able to celebrate Children's Book Day by reading one of the books I recommend together, and in the future, introduce your children to other magnificent works by Scandinavian authors!
Image source: goodfon.su
