A tale of huge creatures summary. Wormwood Tales

It was…

That was a long time ago.

This was when I still loved being sick. But just don’t hurt too much. Not to be so sick that you have to be taken to the hospital and given ten injections, but to be quietly sick, at home, when you are lying in bed and they bring you tea with lemon.

In the evening, my mother comes running from work:

My God! What's happened?!

Yes, nothing... Everything is fine.

I need tea! Strong tea! - Mom is worried.

You don’t need anything... leave me alone.

My darling, my darling... - my mother whispers, hugs me, kisses me, and I moan. Those were wonderful times.

Then my mother would sit next to me on the bed and begin to tell me something or draw a house and a cow on a piece of paper. That's all she could draw - a house and a cow, but I have never in my life seen anyone draw a house and a cow so well.

I lay and moaned and asked:

Another house, another cow!

And a lot came out on the leaf of houses and cows.

And then my mother told me fairy tales.

These were strange fairy tales. I have never read anything like this anywhere else.

Many years passed before I realized what my mother was telling me about her life. And in my head everything fit like fairy tales.

Year after year passed, days flew by.

And this summer I became very ill.

It's a shame to get sick in the summer.

I lay on the bed, looked at the tops of the birches and remembered my mother’s fairy tales.

It was a long time ago... a very long time ago.

It was getting dark.

A horseman was racing across the steppe.

The horse's hooves thumped dully into the ground and got stuck in the deep dust. A cloud of dust rose behind the rider.

There was a fire burning by the road.

Four people were sitting by the fire, and to the side of them some gray stones lay in the field.

The rider realized that these were not stones, but a flock of sheep.

He drove up to the fire and said hello.

The shepherds looked gloomily into the fire. No one answered the greeting, no one asked where he was going.

Finally one shepherd raised his head.

Stones,” he said.

The rider did not understand the shepherd. He saw sheep, but did not see stones. Having whipped his horse, he rushed on.

He rushed to the place where the steppe merged with the earth, and an evening black cloud rose towards him. Clouds of dust were spreading along the ground under a cloud.

The road led to a ravine with deep slopes. On the slope - red and clayey - lay gray stones.

“These are definitely stones,” the rider thought and flew into the ravine.

Immediately an evening cloud covered him and white lightning stuck into the ground in front of the horse’s hooves.

The horse rushed to the side, lightning struck again - and the rider saw how the gray stones turned into animals with sharp ears.

The animals rolled down the slope and threw themselves at the horse’s feet.

The horse snored, jumped, hit with his hoof - and the rider flew out of the saddle.

He fell to the ground and hit his head on a stone. It was a real stone.

The horse rushed off. Behind him, long gray stones trailed along the ground in pursuit. Only one stone remained on the ground. With his head pressed against him, there lay a man who was rushing to an unknown destination.

In the morning he was found by silent shepherds. They stood over him and didn’t say a word.

They did not know that at the very moment when the rider hit his head on the stone, a new person appeared in the world.

And the rider rushed to see this man.

A minute before his death he thought:

“Who will be born? Son or daughter? A daughter would be nice."

A girl was born. She was named Olga. But everyone simply called her Lelya.

It was a hot July day.

A girl was standing in the meadow. She saw green grass in front of her, with large dandelions scattered throughout.

Run, Lelya, run! - she heard. - Run quickly.

“I’m afraid,” Lelya wanted to say, but she couldn’t say it.

Run Run. Do not be afraid of anything. Never be afraid of anything. Run!

“There are dandelions there,” Lelya wanted to say, but she couldn’t say it.

Run straight through the dandelions.

“So they’re ringing,” thought Lyolya, but quickly realized that she would never be able to say such a phrase, and ran straight through the dandelions. She was sure that they would ring under her feet.

But they turned out to be soft and did not ring underfoot. But the earth itself rang, the dragonflies rang, and the silver lark rang in the sky.

Lyolya ran for a long, long time and suddenly saw that a huge white creature was standing in front of her.

Lelya wanted to stop, but she couldn’t stop.

And the huge creature beckoned with an unfamiliar finger, deliberately pulling me towards itself.

Lelya ran up. And then a huge creature grabbed her and threw her into the air. My heart sank quietly.

Don’t be afraid, Lelya, don’t be afraid,” a voice was heard. - Don't be afraid when they throw you into the air. You can fly, after all.

And Lelya really tried to fly, flapped her wings, but didn’t fly far, and again fell into her arms. Then she saw a wide face and small, small eyes. Little black ones.

“It’s me,” said the huge creature, Marfusha. You will not know? Run back now.

And Lelya ran back. She ran through the dandelions again. They were warm and tickled.

She ran for a long, long time and saw a new huge creature. Blue.

Mother! - Lyolya shouted, and her mother picked her up and threw her into the sky:

Don't be afraid. Do not be afraid of anything. You can fly.

And Lelya flew longer and probably could have flown as much as she wanted, but she herself wanted to quickly fall into her mother’s arms. And she descended from the sky, and mother with Lelya in her arms walked through the dandelions to the house.

It was... it was a long time ago. This was when Lelya learned to fly.

She flew every day now and always tried to land in her mother’s arms. It was safer and more pleasant this way.

She flew when she went outside, but sometimes she wanted to fly at home too.

“What can you do with you,” my mother laughed. - Fly.

And Lyolya took off, but it was no fun to fly in the room - the ceiling was in the way, and she couldn’t fly high.

But still she flew and flew. Of course, if it is not possible to fly outside, you need to fly inside the house.

“Okay, that’s it, stop flying,” my mother said. - It’s night outside, it’s time to sleep. Now fly in your dreams.

Nothing can be done - Lelya went to bed and flew in her sleep. Where will you go? If it is not possible to fly on the street or in the house, you need to fly in your sleep.

Stop flying, my mother once said. - Learn to walk properly. Go.

And Lelya went. And she didn’t know where she went.

Go boldly. Don't be afraid of anything.

And she went. And as soon as she walked away, something rang dully above her head:

Don! Don!

Lyolya was scared, but she wasn’t scared right away.

She raised her head and saw something with a golden nose hanging high on the wall. She shook that nose, and her face was round and white, like Marfusha’s, only with a lot of eyes.

“What is that thing with the golden nose?” - Lelya wanted to ask, but she couldn’t ask. The tongue somehow hasn’t turned yet. But I wanted to talk.

Lyolya plucked up her courage and asked this thing:

Are you flying?

“Yes,” the thing answered and waved its nose. She waved a bit scary.

Lelya got scared again, but then she wasn’t scared again.

“If you don’t fly, that’s fine,” Lyolya wanted to say, but again she failed to say it. She simply waved her hand at the thing, and it responded with her nose. Lyolya again with her hand, and she with her nose.

So they waved for some time - some with their noses, some with their hands.

“Okay, that’s enough,” said Lelya. - I went.

Artist - Nikolai Alexandrovich Ustinov.

Wormwood tales are bright and kind, and even slightly magical stories about the childhood of the little girl Lelya, about her mother and friends, about people living in a small village with the beautiful name Polynovka. These are not even quite fairy tales - these are fairy tales-memories, like parables about an old forgotten life - amazing, quiet and beautiful! The book is good to read not only for children, but also for adults: once you start reading, it is difficult to stop... One of the best books that I have read recently.

Publisher: Publishing House Meshcheryakova, 2013 - a new book, very beautifully and efficiently published, but the circulation is very small - only 3000 copies.

84x108/16 (205x290 mm - A4), 136 pages, hardcover.

The stories in the book are unlike anything else, written in a melodious folk language, smooth. These are not even fairy tales, but stories from the lives of ordinary Polynovtsy people. A steppe village in Mari El, where a Russian teacher, Lelya’s mother, teaches local children who cannot speak Russian. All events are described from the perspective of the little girl Lelya, this is her memory of childhood. As an adult, she tells them to her son like fairy tales. “They were strange fairy tales. I have never read anything like them anywhere since.”

This book, according to many reviews (which we fully agree with!) is the best of all children's books that I have read recently. And not only for children - it is also interesting for adults - everyone who is close to folk life.

And what illustrations are there!! Books with illustrations by Ustinov are always masterpieces, but here Ustinov and Koval were also friends - that’s why the book turned out so complete and real...

WHERE CAN I BUY. There is a book on sale in the labyrinth , in ozone, in myshop, .

The Tale of Gray Stones

A Tale of Huge Creatures
The Tale of Some Thing with a Golden Nose
The Tale of the Porch and the Heap
The Tale of the Next Room.
The Tale of the Main Man
The Tale of Grandfather Ignat
The Tale of Polynovka
Marfushina's tale is three pancakes long
The Tale of the Wormwood Tongue
Tale of a Soldier
A fairy tale about that. how Mishka went to war
The Tale of the Egg Game
Marfushina's tale about the steppe brother
The Tale of How Autumn Came
A tale about how classes started at school
Tale of a surname
A tale about a Russian language lesson

The Tale of the Pine Lamp
Grandfather Ignat's tale about the wolf Evstifsyka
A Tale of Holiday Poems
The Tale of the Snow Clock
The Tale of a Blizzard Festival
The Tale of Wolves and the Stupid Cow
Tale of the Spinning Tops
The Tale of the Tops (continued)
The Tale of Three Rubles
Grandfather Ignat's tale about the other three rubles
A Tale of Sisters
The Tale of the Roast Gander
The Tale of Ice
The Tale of the Silver Falcon, told by Natakai
The Tale of the Broken Droshky
The Tale of the Coming of Spring
The Tale of Goose Letters

A Tale of a Strict Holiday
Tale of the Sower
The tale of how the lilac did not bloom
Lunina's tale about the mountain ash
The tale of the devil with horns and a beard
Grandfather Ignat's tale about the goat Kozma Mikitich
The Tale of Katka
The Tale of the Happy Lilac

Wormwood tales completely fascinate the reader with their unusualness, dissimilarity from others, melodiousness and poetry of language and plot. You are immersed in the atmosphere of the steppe, flowering herbs, it’s not for nothing that fairy tales - wormwood... These are fairy tales that his mother told the author when he was little, these are his mother’s memories of childhood.

The main character of the book is a little girl who lives with her mother (a village teacher) in a village somewhere in the wide Russian steppe. The time that the book describes is the beginning of the 20th century. The author talks about the life of a zemstvo teacher who teaches illiterate children. There is a lot of folklore - wise and kind villagers ("Marfushina's Tales").

It was...

Those were wonderful times...

It was...
That was a long time ago.
This was when I still loved to get sick. But just don’t get too sick. Not to be so sick that you have to be taken to the hospital and given ten injections, but to be quietly sick, at home, when you are lying in bed and they bring you tea with lemon.
In the evening, my mother comes running from work:
- My God! What's happened?!
- Yes, nothing... Everything is fine.
- I need tea! Strong tea! - Mom is worried.
- You don’t need anything... leave me.
“My dear, my dear...” my mother whispers, hugs me, kisses me, and I moan. Those were wonderful times.

Then my mother would sit next to me on the bed and begin to tell me something or draw a house and a cow on a piece of paper. That's all she knew how to draw - a house and a cow, but I have never in my life seen anyone draw a house and a cow so well. I lay and moaned and asked:
- Another house, another cow!
And a lot came out on the leaf of houses and cows.
And then my mother told me fairy tales.
These were strange fairy tales. I have never read anything like this anywhere else.
Many years later. before I realized what my mother was telling me about her life. And in my head everything fit like fairy tales.
Year after year passed, days flew by.
And this summer I got very sick.
It's a shame to get sick in the summer.
I lay on the bed, looked at the tops of the birches and remembered my mother’s fairy tales.

About the author and artist of this book. Koval and Ustinov

Wormwood tales are a gift for mom. Yuri Iosifovich Koval did not hide this and spoke frankly: “The fact is that my mother was very ill then, these were her dying years. But I loved her very much, and I wanted to do something for her. And what a writer can do is write.”

There is also a gift for dad. All connoisseurs of “Kovalya’s” life immediately understand that they are cheerful and beautiful The Adventures of Vasya Kurolesov would never have been born if the boy Yura had not been so proud of his dad. The fact is that Joseph Koval was a very brave and unusual person. During the war, he worked in the city of Moscow, on Petrovka, in the department for combating banditry, then became the head of the criminal investigation department of the entire Moscow region, was wounded and awarded many times, but for all this he remained cheerful, witty and even “laughing.. About books He joked to his son like this: “In essence, I suggested everything to Yurka!”

Mom didn't tell me. She only often remembered. About my distant rural childhood and even wrote down my memories - quite simply, everything is as it was. So there are no inventions about old village life in Wormwood Tales.

Wormwood tales were the very last thing that two friends managed to talk about - Yuri Iosifovich Koval and Nikolai Aleksandrovich Ustinov. Once upon a time, in 1987, they made this book. Then another publishing house decided to release it again, and the artist Ustinov began to consult by phone on which picture would be best to put on the cover. We decided: let the wolf be Eustifika.

Soon a book with Evstifika appeared, but Yuri Koval did not see it... And that was also a long time ago, almost twenty years ago. That's why books are needed. If you open Wormwood Tales today or even tomorrow, if you know nothing at all about the writer Koval and the artists Ustinov, it is immediately clear that they are friends...

“Wormwood Tales” are addressed to preschoolers and primary schoolchildren, but they can also be considered a phenomenon of adult prose dedicated to childhood. Actually, “fairy tales” is a very conditional definition of several dozen chapters that make up the “story of ancient times,” as the subtitle says. This is a story about the early childhood of Yu. Koval's mother. Perhaps no writer before him had tackled such a topic - usually when he had not seen it with his own eyes, but really lived in the memory of his mother. He needed to enter into the worldview of the tiny girl Lelya, who at first did not know the names of many things, but who knew how to “fly”; it was necessary to imagine that day, lost in the pre-revolutionary past, when she was born. Lyolya masters the world through a continuous change of impressions, which for her will remain fairy tales-memories for the rest of her life. The tales in this book are told by everyone: mother, the residents of Polynovka, the narrator himself. Their themes and characters are varied: about gray stones, about huge creatures, about a porch and a rubble. The cycle of nature and labor takes place around the baby, and everything in the world for her is a fairy tale, funny, sad or scary. Lelya also tells fairy tales and sees them in her dreams. The “tale of ancient times” begins with the “Tale of Huge Creatures” (about the happiness of childhood and motherhood) and ends with the “Tale of the Happy Lilac” (about the symbolic search for happiness - a five-petal flower). Yu. Koval's speech style is reminiscent of a folk tale; it also has a subtle sense of modern language, preserving the rich beauty of folk speech. For younger schoolchildren and everyone who, in the author’s words, “fell into childhood,” stories from the 70s were written: the parody detective stories “The Adventures of Vasya Kurolesov” and the adventure story “Underdog.” Nedopesok aroused particular interest among adult readers of explicit social media. orientation, satire on the “camp” structure of society. The search for freedom is the main theme of this and other stories by Yu. Koval. Napoleon, an arctic fox of a “particularly valuable color,” escapes from the slavery of a fur farm to the North Pole; the cat Shamayka is his “sister in spirit”, in his love of freedom. The lightest boat in the world is built in order to sail straight along the Yauza, bordered by stone walls, to mysterious channels, lakes and swamps - to a childhood dream.

Question: The genre of autobiographical story in children's reading. Hero type. Features of the plot. Examples of works.

The genre of the autobiographical story is characterized by a number of common features: a focus on recreating the history of an individual life, which allows, by creating a text, to create oneself and overcome time (and, moreover, death), a fundamentally retrospective organization of the narrative, the identity of the author and the narrator or the narrator and the main character.” Artistic autobiography in historical development gravitates more towards the story, a certain synthesis arises - an autobiographical story, an autobiographical narrative - which makes it possible to assume that we are faced with a “genre-specific formation.

There is also no consensus in the genre definition of autobiographical stories about childhood.

Writers, as a rule, build a story about the life of a little hero on the basis of their personal impressions and memories (the autobiographical basis of stories about childhood).

Using the example of “Childhood”, “Adolescence”, “Youth” by L.N. Tolstoy and “Family Chronicle”, “Childhood of Bagrov - Grandson” by S.T. Aksakov, one can see that the theme of childhood is a connecting bridge between children's and adult literature. Since the middle of the 19th century, it has been constantly present in the creative consciousness of Russian writers. Both I.A. Goncharov in “Oblomov” (1859) and M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in “The Golovlev Gentlemen” (1880) and “Poshekhonskaya Antiquity” (1889) turn to childhood as the main personality-forming period.

Using the example of the story “Childhood” by L.N. Tolstoy, it is easy to identify the main differences between literature for children and literature about children, especially obvious because they appeared in the work of one writer. In “Childhood” it is possible to convey all the freshness of children’s perceptions and experiences, which give rise to a similar echo in the mind of an adult. And this awakens in the reader a special kind of sympathy, sympathy carried out not according to the psychological scheme “adult - adult”, but according to the model: “child - child”. In literature for children, the usual “adult-child” scheme is most often used, erecting a familiar wall between the author and the addressee.

The creation of a literary masterpiece took place in a certain sequence: Tolstoy gradually begins to focus his attention on Nikolenka’s personality, on his attitude to the world around him, on his inner experiences. In the hero's fate, it is not the exciting twists and turns that attract the readers' attention, but the subtlest fluctuations, the slightest changes in the inner world of the child, who is gradually discovering a world saturated with complex and contradictory relationships. This is what becomes the source of plot development.

The composition of the story is logical and harmonious: the conventional division of the narrative into several parts allows the writer to show the beneficial influence of village life on Nikolenka and the negative influence of the city, where the conventions of secular society reign. It is natural that around the young hero, entering into various relationships with him, all the other characters are placed, quite clearly divided into two groups. The first includes maman, Natalya Savishna, Karl Ivanovich, the wanderer Grisha, who encourage the development in the boy of the best traits of his nature (kindness, loving attitude towards the world, honesty); the second group of characters - dad, Volodya, Seryozha Ivin - awakens unsightly character traits in Nikolenka (conceit, vanity, cruelty).

The plot of M. Gorky’s story “Childhood” is based on facts from the writer’s real biography. This determined the features of the genre of Gorky’s work - an autobiographical story. In 1913, M. Gorky wrote the first part of his autobiographical trilogy “Childhood,” where he described the events associated with the growing up of a little man. In 1916, the second part of the trilogy “In People” was written, it reveals the hard work life, and a few years later in 1922, M. Gorky, finishing the story about the formation of man, published the third part of the trilogy - “My Universities”. Gorky’s work “Childhood” has the boundaries of the traditional genre of the story: one leading storyline associated with an autobiographical hero, and all the minor characters and episodes also help to reveal Alyosha’s character and express the author’s attitude to what is happening.

The writer simultaneously gives the main character his thoughts and feelings, and at the same time contemplates the events described as if from the outside, giving them an assessment: “... is it worth talking about this? This is the truth that needs to be known to the roots, in order to root it out from memory, from a person’s soul, from our entire life, difficult and shameful.”

It was...

That was a long time ago.

This was when I still loved being sick. But just don’t hurt too much. Not to be so sick that you have to be taken to the hospital and given ten injections, but to be quietly sick, at home, when you are lying in bed and they bring you tea with lemon.

In the evening, my mother comes running from work:

- My God! What's happened?!

- Yes, nothing... Everything is fine.

- I need tea! Strong tea! - Mom is worried.

“You don’t need anything... leave me.”

“My dear, my dear...” my mother whispers, hugs me, kisses me, and I moan. Those were wonderful times.

Then my mother would sit next to me on the bed and begin to tell me something or draw a house and a cow on a piece of paper. That's all she could draw - a house and a cow, but I've never seen anyone draw a house and a cow so well in my life.

I lay and moaned and asked:

- Another house, another cow!

And a lot came out on the leaf of houses and cows.

And then my mother told me fairy tales.

These were strange fairy tales. I have never read anything like this anywhere else.

Many years passed before I realized what my mother was telling me about her life. And in my head everything fit like fairy tales.

Year after year passed, days flew by.

And this summer I became very ill.

It's a shame to get sick in the summer. I lay on the bed, looked at the tops of the birches and remembered my mother’s fairy tales.

A Tale of Huge Creatures

It was a hot July day.

A girl was standing in the meadow. She saw green grass in front of her, with large dandelions scattered throughout.

- Run, Lelya, run! - she heard. - Run quickly.

“I’m afraid,” Lelya wanted to say, but she couldn’t say it.

- Run Run. Do not be afraid of anything. Never be afraid of anything. Run!

“There are dandelions there,” Lelya wanted to say, but she couldn’t say it.

- Run straight through the dandelions.

“So they’re ringing,” thought Lyolya, but quickly realized that she would never be able to say such a phrase, and ran straight through the dandelions. She was sure that they would ring under her feet.

But they turned out to be soft and did not ring underfoot. But the earth itself rang, the dragonflies rang, and the silver lark rang in the sky.

Lyolya ran for a long, long time and suddenly saw that a huge white creature was standing in front of her.

Lelya wanted to stop, but she couldn’t stop.

And the huge creature beckoned with an unfamiliar finger, deliberately pulling me towards itself.

Lelya ran up. And then a huge creature grabbed her and threw her into the air. My heart sank quietly.

“Don’t be afraid, Lelya, don’t be afraid,” a voice was heard. – Don’t be afraid when they throw you into the air. You can fly, after all.

And Lelya really tried to fly, flapped her wings, but didn’t fly far, and again fell into her arms. Then she saw a wide face and small, small eyes. Little black ones.

“It’s me,” said the huge creature, Marfusha. You will not know? Run back now.

And Lelya ran back. She ran through the dandelions again. They were warm and tickled.

She ran for a long, long time and saw a new huge creature. Blue.

- Mother! – Lyolya shouted, and her mother picked her up and threw her into the sky:

- Don't be afraid. Do not be afraid of anything. You can fly.

And Lelya flew longer and probably could have flown as much as she wanted, but she herself wanted to quickly fall into her mother’s arms. And she descended from the sky, and mother with Lelya in her arms walked through the dandelions to the house.