Published by Malysh, 1985.
Cardboard cover, 20 pages. In Russian language.
Approx. size 240 x 240 mm.
The Giant Cockroach or The Roach , is a popular Russian children's fairy tale poem written by poet Korney Chukovsky in 1921. The poem was later published by Raduga Publishers in 1923 and is regarded as a cultural poetic heritage among Russophones. It tells the story of an overgrown cockroach who assumed power over mankind and animals by bullying and threatening them, only to fall prey to a sparrow in the end.
Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky (1882 – 1969) was one of the most popular children's poets in the Russian language. His catchy rhythms, inventive rhymes and absurd characters have invited comparisons with the American children's author Dr. Seuss. Chukovsky's poems Tarakanische ("The Monster Cockroach"), Krokodil ("Crocodile"), Telefon ("The Telephone"), and Moydodyr ("Wash-'em-Clean") have been favorites with many generations of Russophone children. Lines from his poems, in particular Telefon, have become universal catch-phrases in the Russian media and everyday conversation. He adapted the Doctor Dolittle stories into a book-length Russian poem as Doctor Aybolit ("Dr. Ow-It-Hurts"), and translated a substantial portion of the Mother Goose canon into Russian as Angliyskiye Narodnyye Pesenki ("English Folk Rhymes"). He also wrote very popular translations of Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, O. Henry, and other authors, and was an influential literary critic and essayist.
Valentin Valentinovich Andrievich was a Soviet puppet artist, graphic illustrator, and caricaturist.
In 1926, Andrievich moved to Leningrad, where he continued his studies at a drawing studio while working as a poster artist and laborer at the Mariinsky Theater. In the 1930s, he designed a number of productions for regional drama theaters—theaters in Engels, Aleksandrovsk-on-Sakhalin, Yekaterinburg, and Tula. In 1938, he made his debut at the Moscow Regional Puppet Theater. During World War II, he also performed with puppets at the front. In 1944, he became the chief artist at the S.V. Obraztsov Central Puppet Theater. In 1954, Andrievich began working as an illustrator of children's books, creating illustrations for books by K. Chukovsky, S. Marshak, A. Barto, B. Zakhoder, E. Moshkovskaya and others. He collaborated with the children's magazine "Murzilka".