posted on 25 Dec 2016

The Circus and Other Stories : four books by Samuil Marshak and Vladimir Lebedev

The Tate Art Gallery have produced some outstanding children's books in recent years and their focus on writers and illustrators who put drawing and design at the top of their list of virtues has resulted in some marvellous gems becoming available.

This book, published in 2013, is no exception. Here we have four very different books from the Russian collaborators, poet and author Samuil Marshak and artist illustrator, Vladimir Lebedev which were originally produced in the 1920s at their Leningrad studio. The extremely informative and concise essay by Olga Maeots from the Moscow All-Russia State Library at the end of this collection tells us that these years were both the most prolific and most significant that the collaborators enjoyed.

Marshak came from an essentially proletarian background and found a life-long champion in the more famous Maxim Gorky. He was able to travel abroad and study in London where he studied English poetry and fell in love with the work of William Blake. Having been fascinated by English nursery rhymes, Marshak returned to Russia and worked in the children's department at Leningrad State Publishing House. By the end of 1925 he was working with Gorky to set up Detgiz - a dedicated children's book publishing concern.

After working as a translator and propagandist during the second world war, Marshak turned his attention to adult verse and produced original lyric verse until his death in 1964.

Lebedev  who was a little younger than Marshak was an artist with a particular interest in Russian folk graphics and political poster art. Although he never identified with many of the Expressionist and Abstract schools of art that were popular in his youth, Lebedev was always open to experimentation and his drawing takes all kinds of unusual directions - a style that opened his up to quite a lot of contemporary criticism. But his way of working blended perfectly with Marshak's poetic style and the books they created are now thought of as groundbreaking classics.

The four stories in the book are all written in a poetic form and are all very different. The Circus gives us an introduction to a full circus programme while The Ice Cream is a fantasy of a fat man obsessed with ice-cream - so obsessed that he turns into a snowman. Yesterday And Today gives children a chance to see and think about progress in all aspects of life and How The Plane Made A Plane sings the praises of the craftsmen who bring technological advances to life.

The book is colourful, arresting, constantly stimulating and informative. The good news is that the book has been remaindered and this means that for a while at least you can pick up a copy for pretty much next to nothing.

 

Terry Potter

December 2016