Classic Tales and Fables for Children (Prometheus's Literary Classics Series) [Paperback]

Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Author), Bob Blaisdell (Editor), Sol Gordon (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Prometheus's Literary Classics Series | Publication Date: November 2001

Renowned Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) had an abiding interest in children and children's literature. He started a school for peasant children on his family's estate, and later founded another, experimental school with the motto, "Come when you like, leave when you like". Fascinated by the simple charm and fresh innocence with which the children of his schools told stories, Tolstoy began writing about his own childhood, emulating the uncomplicated narrative style and disarming directness of the tales told by the children of his acquaintance. After completing "War and Peace", he incorporated these stories in a series of easy readers. Known as "The ABC Book" (Azbuka) and "The New ABC Book" (Novaia Azbuka), these marvellous readers were widely adopted in Russia and were still in use in the Soviet era. The tales and fables in this charmingly illustrated volume come mainly from these two well-loved primers. Part 1 consists of stories about Tolstoy's own childhood, all told with beautiful simplicity. Part 2 contains Tolstoy's free adaptations of fables from Aesop and from Hindu tradition. Part 3 is devoted solely to his longest and most famous children's work, the fairy tale "Ivan the Fool and His Two Brothers." Never patronising and often humorous, these small gems reveal Tolstoy's deep appreciation for and understanding of children's artistic and moral sensibilities.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Russian

From the Publisher

Leo Tolstoy, who would become one of the world's most famous novelists, was born on August 28, 1828, in Russia on his family's estate, Yasnaya Polyana. As he writes in the first two stories of this collection, he was the youngest of four brothers. He does not mention in the stories that he was a devoted older brother to a sister.

When he was two, Tolstoy's mother died, and he grew up with no real memory of her. Later, when he became a teacher, Tolstoy expressed his belief that the most important education we have is at our mother's knee. When he was nine his father died, and he spent the next several years living with various aunts. At age fifteen he enrolled in Kazan University, which he left without earning a degree.

When he was twenty-one, Tolstoy started a school for peasant children at Yasnaya Polyana, which he had inherited. After an unsuccessful return to college, this time to law school in Petersburg, he set off in 1851 (with the subject of two of the following stories, his dog Bulka) to join his brother Nikolay, a soldier, for adventures in the Caucasus. Tolstoy himself joined the army, and while service as a lieutenant in the Caucasus published the first part of an autobiographical sketch, CHILDHOOD, in a leading journal in 1852. This work brought him nearly instantaneous fame in Russia's literary circles.

In 1856 Tolstoy left the army and returned to Yasnaya Polyana. Growing increasingly interested in education, he began another school, whose motto was "Come when you like, leave when you like." Freedom was perhaps the main tenet in Tolstoy's pedagogical ideas. He wrote about this second Yasnaya Polyana school, its experiments and failures, strategies and successes, and most compellingly about particular peasant children, in a series of articles in 1862. Although his writing style was already lucid, he learned many things about beauty and simplicity in composition from his students, and in fact declared in print that some of their writing far outdistanced his own. In the autumn of 1862, the thirty-four-year-old Tolstoy married eighteen-year-old Sophia Behrs, gave up his school, and began work on what would become WAR AND PEACE.

After completing WAR AND PEACE in 1869, Tolstoy returned to a challenge he had made in his articles on education: writing a series of easy readers for children. He gave this work intense attention while he composed his other great novel, ANNA KARENINA, and tried out the stories on both his own children and the peasant children on the estate. Trusting and relying upon their criticisms and retellings of the stories, he rewrote them until they were as artless and delightful as child's play. Tolstoy's AZBUKA (ABC Book, 1872) and NOVAIA AZBUKA (New ABC Book, 1874) were widely adopted in Russian schools and even used during the Soviet era. The tales and fables that make up this volume come for the most part from these primers. In them he relates extraordinarily beautiful and simple stories from his own experience and observation or retells the peasant children's own stories. He also retells Aesop's and traditional Hindu fables and composes his own comic ones, for instance, "The Peasant and the Cucumbers" and "The Big Oven". Even after the completion of the primers his interest in education and folk literature continued. In the 1880s he and two friends founded a book company, The Intermediary, which published new and classic moral works in inexpensive editions. "Ivan the Fool and His Two Brothers" (1886), Tolstoy's longest and most well known children's work, appeared in this series.

Never patronizing and often surprisingly humorous, all the stories in this anthology show Tolstoy's deep sympathy with and understanding of children's artistic and moral senses. Leo Wiener's collected edition (1904) of Tolstoy's work and Nathan Haskell Dole's edition (1899) are the sources of these translations. To give readers the clearest, most straightforward language, I have synthesized and modernized the phrasings of Wiener and Dole's translations.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Paperback: 126 pages
• Publisher: Prometheus Books (November 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573929395
• ISBN-13: 978-1573929394
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #912,116 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)