“Each age has its own difficulties,” said the mother, “and not every question needs to be answered by a child. Why discuss with him what is inaccessible to his understanding? What will it give? It will only cloud his mind and cause thoughts for which he is completely unprepared. I beg you — do not talk to him on these topics!
“Each age has its own difficulties,” said the mother, “and not every question needs to be answered by a child. Why discuss with him what is inaccessible to his understanding? What will it give? It will only cloud his mind and cause thoughts for which he is completely unprepared. I beg you — do not talk to him on these topics! Filmed by Georgy Danelia (Mosfilm, 1960), the story of Vera Panova, extremely popular in Soviet times and almost forgotten today, is a remarkable monument of her era. An era when even very good parents spoke to their children differently than we do today. Other cultural norms, another measure of frankness, other rules and taboo topics. 4-year-old Seryozha meets with the most important, eternal children’s questions: mother’s new marriage, great-grandmother’s funeral, the birth of a brother … But in Panova’s story, adults do not give the boy an honest answer to a single question and do everything to get away from these questions. Reading this book to your child (rather not the same age as Serezha, but a little older), you can talk about how the style of communication in the family has changed over the past decades, how we have been brought up differently and how we ourselves are raising. And also — to enjoy the psychological prose of the highest quality, to admire the author’s powers of observation, showing the inner world of a little boy with such skill.
Terevinf, 160 p.