OLD PETERS RUSSIAN TALES - 20 illustrated Russian Children's Stories

Book excerpt: This is a book of 20 illustrated Russian folk and fairy tales retold for young people and the young at heart. The tales are a good sampling of Slavic folklore. The stories in this book are those that Russian peasants tell their children and each other. In this volume you will find the stories of Baba Yaga and the Girl with the Kind Heart, The Fool Of The World And The Flying Ship, The Cat Who Became Head-Forester, The Golden Fish, Salt, The Christening In The Village and many more. The seven colour plates and numerous black and white images make the visualisation of the characters, places and events much easier, especially for children. This is a book was compiled in far away Russia for children. Under the windows of the author’s house, the wavelets of the Volkhov River beat quietly in the dusk. A gold light burns on a timber raft floating down the river. Beyond the river in the blue midsummer twilight are the broad Russian plains and the distant forests of Novgorod. Somewhere in that forest of great trees is the hut where old Peter sits at night and tells these stories to his grandchildren. In Russia hardly anybody is too old for fairy stories, and the author even heard soldiers on their way to the front during WWI were overheard to be talking of very wise and very beautiful princesses as they drank their tea by the road side. Arthur Ransome, the compiler, knew there to be many more fairy stories in mother Russia than anywhere else in the world. In this book are a few of those he liked best. NOTE:The editor and compiler spent time in Russia during World War I as a journalist for a radical British newspaper, the Daily News, meeting among others, Lenin and Trotsky and was also known in the London bohemian artistic scene. YESTERDAY'S BOOKS FOR TODAY'S CHARITIES 10% of the profit from the sale of this book will be donated to charities. ============ KEYWORDS/TAGS: Folklore, fairy, tales, myths, legends, children’s, bedtime, stories, fables, moral, hut in the forest, tale of the silver saucer and the transparent apple, sadko, frost, snow, ice, forest, fool of the world and the flying ship, Novgorod, steppe, plains, baba yaga, little girl with the kind heart, cat who became head-forester, spring in the forest, little daughter of the snow, prince Ivan, witch baby, little sister of the sun, stolen turnips, magic tablecloth, sneezing, goat, wooden whistle, little master misery, chapter of fish, golden fish, who lived in the skull, alenoushka and her brother, fire-bird, horse of power, princess vasilissa, hunter, wife, three men of power, evening, midnight, sunrise, salt, christening in the village