Cover not available
Part of
Children's Literature and the Avant-Garde
Edited by Elina Druker and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer
[Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition 5] 2015
► pp. 189–214

Chapter 8. Mirror images

On Soviet-Western reflections in children’s books of the 1920s and 1930s

| National Research University Higher School of Economics
This chapter compares the Soviet and the Western children’s books of the 1920s–1930s. The creative output of the Soviet innovative artists and writers was in many respects isomorphic to the production of the modernist left artists and educators in the West. The various kinds of formal experiments in the sphere of visual representation are considered in detail. An important topic that is investigated is the “production book”, the genre of children’s books about machines and about how things are made. It corresponds with the idea of “here and now” proclaimed by the American educator Lucy Sprague Mitchell. A special emphasis is placed on the demonstration of similarities in the concepts of the New Man (Soviet) and the New Generation (American).
Published online: 29 July 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/clcc.5.09ste
References (66)
References
Primary Sources
Agnivtsev, Nikolai. 1926. Malen’kii Chorny Murzuk. Illus. Samuil Adlivankin. Moscow: Mol. Gvardiya.Google Scholar
. 1926. Tvoi Mashinnye Druz’ya. Illus. Alexey Efimov. Moscow: Raduga.Google Scholar
Artzybasheff, Boris 1954. As I See. New York NY: Dodd, Mead.Google Scholar
Boccioni, Umberto et al. 1910. Manifesto of the Futurist Painters, 11 February 1910 // The Niuean Pop Cultural Archive. URL: <[URL]> (22 November 2013).
Brown, Margaret Wise. 1938. The Little Fireman. Illus. Esphyr Slobodkina. New York NY: William Scott & Co.Google Scholar
Burton, Virginia Lee. 1935. Choo Choo: The Story of a Little Engine Who Ran Away. Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
. 1939. Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Cendrars, Blaise. 1928. Petits contes nègres pour les enfants des blancs. Illus. Pierre Pinsard. Paris: ‎Les Éditions des Portiques.Google Scholar
Deharme, Lise. 1928. Il était une petite pie. Illus. Juan Miró. Paris: Edition Jeanne Bucher.Google Scholar
Exposition le Livre d’Enfant en U.R.S.S: 27 avril-22 mai. 1929. Paris: Editions Bonaparte. Google Scholar
Fillmore, Parker. 1919. Czechoslovak Fairy Tales. Illus. Jan Matulka. New York NY: W. Collins, Sons & Co.Google Scholar
Hoyt Swift, Hildegarde. 1929. Little Blacknose: The Story of a Pioneer. Illus. Lynd Ward. New York NY: E. M. Hale & Co.Google Scholar
Il’in, Mikhail. 1927. Karmanny Tovarishch. Moscow & Leningrad: GIZ.Google Scholar
. 1930. Rasskaz o Velikom Plane. Moscow: GIZ.Google Scholar
Ionov, Ilya. 1926. Topotun. Illus. Mikhail Tsekhanovsky. Leningrad: Raduga.Google Scholar
Kalinin, Nikolai (ed.). 1995. Ol-Ga-lina from Chichago. Da! 2-3: 39-48.Google Scholar
Lebedev, Vladimir. 1922. Chuch-lo. Petrograd: Epokha.Google Scholar
Liddell, Mary. 1926. Little Machinery. Garden City NY: Doubleday, Page and Co.Google Scholar
Lissitzky, El. 1928. Chetyre Arifmeticheskikh Deistviya (Published in 1984 by Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne).Google Scholar
Marshak, Samuil. 1925. Vchera i Segodnya. Illus. Vladimir Lebedev. Leningrad: Raduga.Google Scholar
. 1927. Sem’ Chudes. Illus. Mikhail Tsekhanovsky. Leningrad: Raduga.Google Scholar
McMahon, John. 1922. In and Out, Up and Down: A Door Book. New York NY: John Martin’s Book House.Google Scholar
Meigs, Cornelia. 1928. The Wonderful Locomotive. Illus. Berta & Elmer Hader. New York NY: McMillan Co.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Lucy Sprague. 1925. Kniga Rasskazov pro Zdes’ i Teper’ dlya Detei ot 2 do 7 Let. Moscow: GIZ.Google Scholar
. 1925. Neboskreb. Moscow: GIZ.Google Scholar
. 1925. Pesenka Novogo Parovoza. Moscow: GIZ.Google Scholar
. 1927. Kak Borya Gulyal po Nyu Yorku. Moscow: GIZ.Google Scholar
. 1929. Kak Voda Popala v Vannu. Moscow: GIZ.Google Scholar
Mukerji, Dhan Gopal. 1928. The Gay-Neck. Illus. Boris Artzybasheff. New York NY: Dutton.Google Scholar
Parain, Natalie. 1932. Ronds et Carrés. Paris: Flammarion.Google Scholar
Patri, Angelo. 1928. Pinocchio in America. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co.Google Scholar
. 1930. The Adventures of Pinocchio. New York NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co.Google Scholar
Pavlovich, Nadezhda. 1925. Parovoz-gulyaka. Illus. Boris Kustodiev. Moscow: GIZ.Google Scholar
Piper, Watty [Arnold Munk]. 1930. The Little Engine That Could. New York NY: Platt & Munk.Google Scholar
Poltavsky, S. 1927. Detki-Raznotzvetki. Illus. Sergey Chekhonin. Moscow: ZIF.Google Scholar
Schwitters, Kurt, Steinitz, Käte & van Doesburg, Theo. 1925. Die Scheuche Märchen. Hannover: Aposs Verlag.Google Scholar
Shaposhnikov, G. 1927. Vanya v Kitae. Illus. Anatoly Kalinichenko. Rostov-na-Donu: Sev.-Kavkaz ODN.Google Scholar
Shatalova-Rakhmanova, Maria. 1926. Figury. Leningrad: Raduga.Google Scholar
Stein, Gertrude. 1939. The World Is Round. Illus. Clement Hurt. New York NY: William R. Scott.Google Scholar
Vvedensky, Aleksandr. 1929. Zheleznaya Doroga. Illus. Alisa Poret. Leningrad: GIZ.Google Scholar
Zilov, Lev. 1924. Mai i Oktyabrina. Illus. Vladimir Smirnov. Moscow: Mospoligraf.Google Scholar
Secondary Sources
Atzmon, Leslie. 1996. Scarecrow fairytale: A collaboration of Theo Van Doesburg and Kurt Schwitters. Design Issues 12(3): 14-34. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Averill, Esther. 1930. Avant-garde and traditions in France. In Contemporary Illustrators of Children’s Books, compiled by Bertha E. Mahony & Elinor Whitney, 89-96. Boston MA: The Bookshop for Boys and Girls.Google Scholar
Bates, Ernest Sutherland. 1932. We Americans: A study in infantilism. In Our Neurotic Age: A Consultation, Samuel D. Schmalhausen (ed), 434-452. New York NY: Farrar and Rinehart.Google Scholar
Beeck, Nathalie op de. 2004. The first picture book for modern children: Mary Liddell’s little machinery and the fairy tale of modernity. Children’s Literature 32: 41-83. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. 1999. Arcades Project. Translated by Howard Eiland & Kevin McLaughlin; edited by Rolf Tiedemann. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Buck-Morrs, Susan. 2002. Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Calhoun, Arthur W. 1930. The child mind as a social product. In The New Generation: The Intimate Problems of Modern Parents and Children, Victor F. Calverton & Samuel D. Schmalhausen (eds), 74-87. New York NY: Macaulay.Google Scholar
Chukovsky, Kornei. 1963. Ot Dvukh Do Pyati, 17th edn. Moscow: Detgiz.Google Scholar
Denning, Michael. 1996. The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century. New York NY: Verso.Google Scholar
Dietrich, Dorothea. 1993. The Collages of Kurt Schwitters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Flerina, Evgenia. 1926. Pedagogicheskaya otzenka proizvodstvennykh knig dlya doshkol’nikov. In Iz opyta issledovatel’skoi raboty po detskoi knige: Analiz proizvodstvennoi knigi dlya doshkol’nikov, Esfir I. Stanchinskaya & Evgenia A. Flerina (eds), 11-14. Moscow: Doshk. Otd. Galvsotsvoprosa.Google Scholar
Hearn, Michael Patrick. 1996. Discover, explore, enjoy. In Myth, Magic, and Mystery: One Hundred Years of American Children’s Book Illustration, Michael Patrick Hearn, Trinkett Clark & H. Nichols B. Clark (eds), 1-41. Boulder CO: Roberts Rinehart Publishers and Norfolk VA: In cooperation with The Chrysler Museum of Art.Google Scholar
Higonnet, Margaret. 2009. Modernism and childhood: Violence and renovation. The Comparatist 33: 86-108. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ivanov, Vyacheslav V. 2009. The theme of chronotope in the culture of the newest time. In Potom i Opytom (By Sweat and Experience), Vyacheslav V. Ivanov, 312-339. Moscow: Tsentr Knigi BGBIL im. M.I.Rudomino.Google Scholar
Mahony, Bertha. 1929. Realms of Gold. Boston MA: Horn Book.Google Scholar
Mahony, Bertha & Whitney, Elinor (eds). 1930. Contemporary Illustrators of Children’s Books. Boston MA: The Bookshop for Boys and Girls.Google Scholar
Mickenberg, Julia. 2010. The new generation and the new Russia: Modern childhood as collective fantasy. American Quarterly 62(1): 103-134. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pankenier, Sara. 2006. Infant non sens: Infantilist Aesthetic of the Russian Avant-garde, 1909–1939. PhD dissertation, Stanford University.
Segal, Elena. 1962. Iz Vospominanii. In Zhizn i Tvorchestvo M. Il’ina, 276-403. Moscow: Detgiz.Google Scholar
Stales, José Lebrero & Pérez, Carlos (eds). 2010. Toys of the Avant-garde. Málaga: Fundación Museo Picasso Málaga.Google Scholar
Steiner, Evgeny. 1999. Stories for Little Comrades: Revolutionary Artists and the Making of Early Soviet Children’s Books. Seattle WA: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
. 2014. Avant-garde and the Construction of the New Man: Utopias of the 1920-30s. Sztuka Europy Wschodniej (Warszawa-Torún) 2: 93-102.Google Scholar
Steinitz, Käte 1968. Kurt Schwitters: A Portrait from Life. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Sverdlova, Klavdia. 1925. Slaby uchastok ideologicheskoi raboty (The weak sector of ideological work). Na Postu: 113-120.Google Scholar
Wright, Rowe. 1928. Women in publishing: May Massee. Publishers’ Weekly. 29 September.Google Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Conrad, JoAnn
2019. Modernity and Modernism in Twentieth-Century American Picturebooks. International Research in Children's Literature 12:2 ► pp. 127 ff. DOI logo
Emeliyanova, Maria
2019. I periodici per l’infanzia degli anni Venti e la creazione del futuro cittadino sovietico . Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie occidentale :1 DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2018. The Nation and the Child [Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition, 10], DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.