Yours, Mine and Theirs

Amit and I have very distinct ideas about books and their ownership. I think books must be allowed to roam free. They must be given to friends, so that they can freely mess with other people's minds. I love stumbling into my books in friends’ houses. By equal token, if I borrow a book of yours, I might just forget I did, and I do believe that's not a crime. Because, honestly, if we guard our books too much, how will they ever meet new people? 

Since I also v. much love the act of buying books at random, I have to give them away so that my house doesn't crumble under their weight. And then sometimes, with some books I adore, I really feel that if you’re my friend, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t share this piece of literature with you, right here, right now. You may get on with your life; but if I don’t press that book into your (possibly reluctant) hands, I’ll never forgive myself.

Amit, on the other hand, would like to build a stack of lovingly-gathered books. Then he’d like to climb on it and sit there and be watchful, while his friends admire the stack. It’s a healthy enough sense of collector-ship, except he takes too much joy in the sheer possession, I often tell him. Don't get me wrong – he's a lovely, generous man, and he'd give you the shirt off his back; he'll gift friends books, and lend them books, but in his head, unlike in mine, the 'nice distinction between meum and tuum', as P G Wodehouse puts it, hasn't been completely wiped out with a water-soaked sponge.

And then comes the moment when I want a particular book. I miss it, I need it. And I know we have it somewhere. So I indignantly ask Amit where he put it. Gallantly, he looks for it, he doesn’t find it, we dredge our memories, and of course, flashback to scene of the wife forcing book into bashful guest’s bag. I look shame-faced; Amit is pissed off at the wasted time and at my now-what-will-I-do expression. The thing is, when the book’s gone, no one misses it as much as I do.

Between us we've managed to accumulate a decent stack of children’s picture books – old and new. And the pride of the stack is certainly our little trove of vintage picture books (Indian, Western and Russian) that Amit has bought over the years, trawling used bookstores in the cities he visits. The collection is safe and has grown – probably because he has tucked them away in a cabinet way below my limited bending-range. There's no way I can force unwitting children to take them home. Out of my reach, they seem to have bred and had babies.

We love American vintage picture books, but we grew up in India in the 70s. Our childhoods (tragically TV-less) sparkled with Russian picture books. Being a ‘friendly’ country, the Soviet Union pumped the most beautiful children’s books into India. They were meticulously translated and printed. While American books of the '60s and '70s were beautiful, some pictures in the Soviet books bring back visceral memories of being small and entirely fascinated by a specific image. Often it's an image I've clean forgotten – a memory I never knew I had. But when I see it now, in that newly-bought-old-picture-book, it's back. Sudden, sharp, evocative, and smelling of being 7-years-old again.

Two of the books we recently found did that for us – The Live Hat for me, and the The Brave Ant for Amit. Here are images from some lovely old picture books (uploading pics on Blogger is not fun – or satisfying!).

A Live Hat by N NosovTranslated from the Russian by Fainna Glagoleva. Illustrations by I. Semyonov. Progress Publishers, 1977. I had completely forgotten this book, but seeing it had me reeling with memories of a summer evening and mum giving it to me – she'd bought it on the train coming home from work. I took it with no sense of gratitude at all, and lost myself in it immediately. That picture of the crawling hat was genuinely stirring and a bit scary! Lovely, crystal clear images of the entire book here. I love the one of the boys throwing potatoes at the hat – but you'll have to go to the link to see it!
photo 1-1 photo 1-2 photo 1-3


The Brave Ant by Tatiana Makarova. Illustrated by Gennadi Pavlishin. Translated into English by Fainna Glagoleva. Written circa 1940, English translation: Progress Publishers, 1976. When we found this book, Amit gasped because it brought to mind his many attempts to draw out the luminous pictures as a kid. Truly, my image doesn't do justice to that respectable mosquito and his leaf-letter! Try this page for a few images from the book. You'll have to scroll down, though.

photo 1-1 photo 1-2 photo 1-3








































Life with Grandmother Kandiki (below) by Anna Garf. Illustrated by Victor Duvidov. 0828511829 In wraps. Translated by Joy Jennings. 
photo 1-1 photo 1-2 photo 1-3





Gallant and Dopey, Pages from a Dog's Scrapbook, by Marjorie Turner. Raphael Tuck & Sons, Tuck Books (more about them and their lovely postcards later!). 1930. Please head to Cyndee Marcoux's page for see some really good quality images of each page. Two below are from her pinterest page.
photo 1-1 photo 1-2 photo 1-3





























The White Deer, (below) a Latvian Folk Tale. Translated from the Russian by Fainna Solasko. Illustrations by Nikolai Kochergin. Progress Publishers, 1973. The most jewel-bright of all the books we have!
photo 1-1
photo 1-2
photo 1-3






















The Wolf who Sang Songs by Boris Zakhoder (below). Illustrated by V Chizhikov and Translated by Avril Ryman. Progress Publishers, 1973. You can see beautiful scans of whole pages of the comically-drawn book here.










  









And then the most traditional and yet bizarre-looking of them all, Alyonushka, (below) Russian folk tales translated by Irina Zheleznova and Bernard Isaacs. Illustrated by Igor Yershov. Progress Publishers, 1989.





The orange octopus acting as the sea-god's mount is so unusual and so much fun – as lovely as these warriors flying on horses against the sunset!


While hunting for these books online, I ran into another visceral-memory-stirrer-upper. The dusty, yellow-blue drawings for Masha's Awful Pillow. Those pictures of Masha kicking the pillow, her bright blue bed, and Masha sitting next to a kennel are, well, things I didn't know were lurking in my head. Now to find the actual book :) Yay! More book-crawling needed!


Comments

Anonymous said…
fabulous
thanks :) could i have a name?

Popular Posts