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Picturing the Page: Illustrated Children’s Literature and Reading under Lenin and Stalin

By Megan Swift

© 2020

Based on sources from rare book libraries in Russia and around the world, Picturing the Page offers a vivid exploration of illustrated children’s literature and reading under Lenin and Stalin – a period when mass publishing for children and universal public education became available for the first time in Russia. By analysing the illustrations in fairy tales, classic "adult" literature reformatted for children, and war-time picture books, Megan Swift elucidates the vital and multifaceted function of illustrated children’s literature in repurposing the past.

Picturing the Page demonstrates that while the texts of the past remained fixed, illustrations could slip between the pages to mediate and annotate that past, as well as connect with anti-religious, patriotic, and other campaigns that were central to Soviet children’s culture after the 1917 Revolution.

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Product Details

  • World Rights
  • Page Count: 240 pages
  • Illustrations: 99
  • Dimensions: 6.4in x 0.8in x 9.3in
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SKU# SP003672

  • PUBLISHED MAY 2020

    From: $22.46

    Regular Price: $29.95

    ISBN 9781442615311
  • PUBLISHED MAY 2020
    From: $75.00
    ISBN 9781442647152
  • PUBLISHED MAY 2020
    From: $29.95
Library Recommendation

Quick Overview

This is the first work to examine illustrated children’s literature under Lenin and Stalin and to make use of rarely-explored Soviet children’s books from libraries around the world.

Picturing the Page: Illustrated Children’s Literature and Reading under Lenin and Stalin

By Megan Swift

© 2020

Based on sources from rare book libraries in Russia and around the world, Picturing the Page offers a vivid exploration of illustrated children’s literature and reading under Lenin and Stalin – a period when mass publishing for children and universal public education became available for the first time in Russia. By analysing the illustrations in fairy tales, classic "adult" literature reformatted for children, and war-time picture books, Megan Swift elucidates the vital and multifaceted function of illustrated children’s literature in repurposing the past.

Picturing the Page demonstrates that while the texts of the past remained fixed, illustrations could slip between the pages to mediate and annotate that past, as well as connect with anti-religious, patriotic, and other campaigns that were central to Soviet children’s culture after the 1917 Revolution.

Continue Reading Read Less

Product Details

  • World Rights
  • Page Count: 240 pages
  • Illustrations: 99
  • Dimensions: 6.4in x 0.8in x 9.3in

  • Reviews

    "In compelling prose, Megan Swift offers a kaleidoscopic vision of Soviet history through her focus on images that shift with the times at points of tension between the present and the past. With firm scholarly grounding, Picturing the Page closely examines visual detail and contextualizes works within the ideological intricacies of key periods to uncover and explain telling Soviet rereadings of classic texts."


    Sara Pankenier Weld, Associate Professor of Germanic and Slavic Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

    "With impressive scholarship, Picturing the Page highlights both Russian and English-language materials, including critical monographs, periodicals, and rare illustrated books from the early revolutionary period."


    Larissa Rudova, Professor of German and Russian, Pomona College

  • Author Information

    Megan Swift is an associate professor of Russian Studies at the University of Victoria.

  • Table of contents

    List of Illustrations
    Acknowledgments
    Abbreviations

    Introduction: Picturing a New Childhood

    Part I: Fairy-Tale Nation

    1. The Poet, the Priest, and the Peasant
    2. Up, Up, and Away on the Little Humpbacked Horse

    Part II: The Afterlife of Russian Classics

    3. The Bronze Horseman Rides Again
    4. Anna Karenina and the Mother-and-Child Reunion

    Part III: War-Time Picture Books

    5. Mayakovsky Is Marching with Us
    6. Pochta: Circulation, Delivery, Return

    Conclusion: Yesterday and Today

    Notes
    Bibliography
    Index
    Colour Plates

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