TOY TIME by BARTO, A

Moscow: Mejdunarodnaya Kniga, 1936. Very good plus.. A rare contemporary English translation of this work by the celebrated Russian poet, children's author and wartime journalist. Illustrated children's verses, including five songs set to music. A gentle fantasia whose nursery atmosphere gives way to "March brigades / On parade". Originally published as Игрушки ("Toys") in 1936, TOY TIME's success significantly increased Barto's fame and popularity; she was later a recipient of the Hans Christian Andersen Medal as well as the Order of Lenin, the Stalin Prize, and numerous other civilian honors conferred by the Soviet Union. In addition to her work for children, she wrote anti-Nazi poetry and was a Western Front correspondent during World War II. With illustrations by Koznetsov, characteristic of the period: "Soviet children's book design of the 1920s and 1930s is the acme of all design before and after... books in which an absolute balance between message and image has been found" (Arkady… Read More