Marina Pototskaya: “I remember myself well in childhood - it helps me write. The Tale of the Blue-Eyed Pig
"... We talked with Marina Pototskaya about the new book “Lemonade Cow”, sources of inspiration and important role fooling around in raising children.
Lemonade Cow and Other Stories
352 rub.
These funny stories involve children and adults, as well as animals, birds and even insects - from the big Bear to the tiny Snail. Happens to them all amazing events: the cow Sister starts giving lemonade instead of milk on Sundays, the piglet Fedorchuk meets a vegetarian wolf in the forest, and a real pirate flies into the yard of the boy Styopa...
Labyrinth You started writing early - at the age of 14. Where did you start and how did you come to the children's story?
Marina Pototskaya At the age of 14 I wrote poetry. Then it seemed to me that writing prose was boring. I remember at some festival children's creativity there were about 15 young poets, and there was only one young prose writer, and he was reading something burdensome, so they listened to him with difficulty.
L Did you start writing children's stories straight away?
MP No, that was much later. I began writing systematically for children thanks to the radio program “Let’s Help Mom!”, which my husband and co-author Boris Salibov and I did on children’s radio. It was a program in which five people participated: Boris and I, two very musical and very hooligan children, Anya Granova and Dima Lgovsky, and also our composer Viktor Pankratov. The program was broadcast on the first program in the morning on the first Sunday of the month, then repeated 2 weeks later. Many people wrote to us from all over the then USSR. I was the author of the script, Borya wrote the lyrics, and each program had to have one story. Well, or a fairy tale. Over the course of a year, there were, accordingly, twelve of them. Some of these stories were included in my books - for example, “Acute Pig Disease.” And the very first a funny story for children it’s probably “Two Grandmothers.”
In general, I am very grateful to the old children's radio- the same one that was created by the legendary Rosa Joffe and Nikolai Litvinov. My mother, actress Irina Pototskaya, worked there a lot. She brought me there for the first time when I was five years old. I came “on business”: to participate in a radio play, because I already knew how to quickly read a text from a sheet. Time passed and I became an author.
L There was a gap of 23 years between your first and new books for children. Why did this happen?
MP Well, at the end of 1992, the whole family, with two daughters, with my mother, cat Leva and dog Dvorzhik, moved from Moscow to Tel Aviv. Of course, I didn’t stop writing because of this, but at first it was something else: journalistic things, adult stories... In principle, everything I wrote was published in Israeli Russian-language publications. We even did a children’s radio program “Suitcase Without Thorns” for some time, which was completely different from the Moscow one. Once or twice over all these years I had offers from Moscow about publishing a book, but they did not end in anything. The last one is from the publishing house " Astrel ».
Probably, I myself am to some extent to blame for not speeding up the process. When I came to Moscow, I didn’t go to the editorial offices. When, at the request of the publishing house, I sent my stories there from Israel, I didn’t call every week, didn’t find out how things were going... It seemed inconvenient to me.
I generally have a problem with business phone calls. I once, when preparing to make a business call, wrote my remarks on a piece of paper in order to deliver them more convincingly.
So, when I finally called the publishing house (the story lasted for several years), they explained to me that now they only publish famous writers. And they named several names. Luckily, our friend Andrei Usachev was among them.
Well, and then, when Andryusha and I met (he came to Jerusalem book fair), then I remembered this telephone conversation. Or I might not remember, because we had enough topics for conversation without it. And then the pause between my first and second books would have been… I don’t know, maybe a hundred years long. If Andrey, having returned to Moscow, had not wanted to find out what was happening with my stories and whether they were worth publishing.
L And it turned out that they still stand.
MP Yes, I am very glad that my stories were in demand. Agree, it’s a good incentive to know that someone needs something you do. Three publishing houses in Moscow and St. Petersburg became interested in my stories. It was six years ago. And now " When mom was little"in St. Petersburg was published in late autumn in its third edition. Reissued in " Onyx » — « Nekhochukin and others”, published there quite recently “ The Tale of the Blue-Eyed Pig" Now here's the premiere " lemonade cow"in AST, I’m very interested in how it will be received. And in the publishing house " Time"A new book has already been published" Incident in Plyushkino" And I write further.
Speech : Fairy tales for children
Onyx : For kids about all the good things
L How do you manage, so many years after writing your first story, to retain such a piercingly childish sound, as if all this never happened? adult life, which for many forever erases the memory of childhood?
MP I just remember myself very well as a child. I don’t think I’ve changed that much since then. That is, it has changed, of course, but this is largely “outside”.
I haven't learned much since I learned to read. Does it seem to me or not that adults always talked to me seriously? I'm with them for sure. I remember the relationship between my height and, say, my grandmother’s buffet: tall, huge. I remember my toys and games that I came up with. Problems and disappointments.
L Did your childhood experiences inform your stories?
MP In my childhood I didn’t have many impressions, but they were interesting: a communal apartment on Pyatnitskaya Street - a whole country, six absolutely different families. So yes, something, of course, resonated in my stories. Performances in my mother’s theater, which I watched as a child exclusively from behind the scenes, from the “reverse point”. Dacha summer near Moscow under the supervision of a detachment of grandmothers. I had 4 of them, my mother’s mother and her three sisters, which is probably why I write about grandmothers with pleasure.
And I also really love animals. From my stories it is not difficult to understand. When I was a child, a cat always lived in our house, even in one room of this communal apartment. And for more than thirty years, a cat and a dog have always lived in our family. It was so in Moscow, and so it is here. Outbreds, some from the street, some from the shelter. I think this is very important for adults, and especially for children. Of course, these are additional responsibilities, but the joy is much greater than the hassle.
L How many new stories are included in the collection “Lemonade Cow”?
MP“The Lemonade Cow” contains 29 stories and fairy tales, and another 15 short stories about the boy Kotya: “Kotya and everything around.” I’m very interested in how child readers will react to the series about Kotya, because these stories are perhaps even more suitable for adults. When I thought about this, it seemed to me that by reading them, adults could look at themselves through children's eyes.
The fairy tales and stories in this book are very different. They have varying amounts of magic, and some simply don’t have it. The language is also different. Of course, in every story there is me, my loved ones, and the children from the school where I work.
Not literally, of course, but some strokes, phrases, situation...
L Tell us about them, how the stories were born?
MP The fairy tale “Hide and Seek,” for example, is a story from my childhood. I was about six years old, and our student neighbor once bet with a friend that he would hide me in his room so that he wouldn’t find me. He pulled out books from the top shelf in the closet, stuck me there and blocked me with books. And, of course, the friend lost!
I wrote two short fairy tales “Masha, the Bear and the Tablet” and “Styopa and the Pirate” for my students: to make it more interesting for them to learn to read in Russian. And then it turned out that these fairy tales could be included in a book.
And the fairy tale “Summer of the Dragon” about the three-headed fidget and his grandmother was inspired by my grandson Pavlik. But that was back in those ancient times when I washed his hair. Now he is ten years old, and he has been washing himself for a long time. But last year I got a granddaughter, Galya, who cannot speak, but growls very menacingly in her bass voice when she is in a good mood.
Galina’s mother, my daughter, received a call from Pavlikin’s mathematics teacher: the boy behaved badly in class. Well, mom listens to the teacher’s complaints, and suddenly Galya starts growling terribly in her arms. The teacher stops: “Excuse me?..” Of course, it didn’t occur to him that this was an eight-month-old child - he probably thought that Pavlika’s mother was reacting this way to his call. Here you go, a ready start for a new story!
L Are you still working at the school?
MP Yes, at the evening “Russian” school in Tel Aviv. If I may say so, I “develop” the Russian speech of my students. We read, fantasize, learn poems by heart, sing... They really love it when I read aloud to them. True, you have to stop often: a lot unclear words. Life in Russia and Israel is different, and so is the nature. Snow is rare here, winter is mild, and there are no snowstorms at all.
L Do you test your works on them?
MP Of course, I read them almost all my children's stories and fairy tales, asking them what they think about them. I look at what and how they react. Although, of course, this is not a “pure” experiment: after all, Russian is a second language for most of them. I try to understand what age this or that story is for. Although this does not always work out. Children are all different, and the stories are also different. I can see this from the reviews of parents on the Internet: some recommend my books to four-year-olds, and others to ten-year-olds.
L Are there stories that you “spotted” at work?
MP For eleven years I was an adviser on working with children from the CIS in regular Israeli schools. Helped children and their parents get used to new country. It was not an easy task, and there were many different impressions, mostly dramatic. You can't write a funny book here. I was thinking about these... pedagogical and psychological notes. But for now I'm busy with other things. Although I keep notebooks with notes: this is an invaluable thing - genuine human, children's stories.
L Almost all of your stories are about endless and unconditional acceptance of every person with his shortcomings and oddities. Very therapeutic stories, in my opinion, they should be recommended to be read aloud to nervous parents for the purpose of psychological rehabilitation...
MP Very interesting conclusion! Glad if this is the case. I've never analyzed my stories. It `s naturally. I'll start and stop writing.
L What does a person need for a happy childhood?
MP Childhood is a very difficult time. " Happy childhood" is a banal and deceptive cliche. Absolutely, happiness is not in the number of toys or gadgets. The child has too few opportunities to change anything in the world around him. Not in huge world, but in his, small one. And if something is wrong there, then this is a gigantic problem for a person at five, ten, and fifteen. It is important that parents think about this. And they tried to understand their son or daughter, to remember themselves at his age - to remember honestly, not as an exemplary example-legend. Don't be boring, joke more, and just fool around together - this is very important point in education happy person! Turn off the TV more often, take each other’s hands and leave the house towards new adventures.
