Works by Mr. Snegirev. G.Ya.Snegirev

Laureate of the Debut 2005 literary prize, Alexander Snegirev, belongs to that first unafraid generation of Russians, whose rosy childhood occurred during the years of perestroika, and whose youth still continues. The young writer was born and raised in Moscow, received a higher education and the mysterious title “Master of Political Science.” He traveled throughout Europe, Asia, Africa and America not as a major boy, but working as a garbage man, waiter, construction worker, etc. Now he is making short films, trying to work in big cinema, in short, he is “at the very beginning of his creative path.”

And this path, by the way, is clearly visible. The prize is, of course, good, but what personally attracted me to his works is that Snegirev is trying to work “above the barriers” of avant-garde, “chernukha”, varnishing, narcissism, macabre, pop music and other dregs. Which, for the most part, he succeeds in. Writing such short realistic (sorry, critics, for the expression) stories is difficult, but fun. The life around us, with its abundance of plots, ugliness and tenderness, fully contributes to this. I'm glad that Alexander seems to understand this too.

Evgeniy Popov

All decent people exercise their will on this day, from eight in the morning to eight in the evening. I earn pocket money by working as an observer for one large party at station No. 4. The station is located right at the entrance of my friend Schultz.

There's not much to do. Sometimes I call the party headquarters and tell them the percentage of people who voted. And the rest of the time I sit and read Frisch’s novel “I’ll Call Myself Gantenbein.” My favorite moment is when the hero drives a Porsche along the Swiss mountain roads. I myself wouldn’t mind driving such a car along the exciting serpentine road.

Other observers are sitting nearby: grannies from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and an uncle from someone unknown. Uncle chews constantly, and his mouth, like that of the American actor Tom Berenger, is clearly defined and vicious. Otherwise there is no resemblance to Berenger. Besides, my uncle always jumps up and helps voters stuff in their ballots. As if they couldn't handle it themselves. When my uncle jumps up, he clutches the yellow bag of provisions between his knees. He either chews or clutches the bag. One aunty observer is picking her nails. A grandmother from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in a down cape is reading one of the “yellow” newspapers with a half-dressed woman on the front page. The elections are going smoothly.

At four o'clock the incident occurred. A heated blonde burst into the room and immediately began to demand permission to vote for her grandmother. Grandma, they say, is sick, is in the hospital and cannot come herself. The blonde, of course, is not allowed. She insists. She is not allowed. Then she turns all red, puffs up as if she’s about to burst, and begins to roar. This blonde girl at my school was several years older. I remember her. The buttons on her blouse always almost bounced off, such healthy breasts.

After the blonde left, filling the area with sobs, and the passions subsided, I was called to supervise voting at home. The guy from the commission took a small urn, and we went to the addresses of the sick and infirm in the nearest houses. In the first apartment we were met by an obvious simulator. A kind of fat woman is sitting and watching TV in the kitchen. Like I couldn’t come myself. This was followed by a recently operated old lady who smelled of medicine. The fragrant granny was replaced by a bearded man with a skinny wife. His whole house is filled to the ceiling with geological literature. Geologist, probably. This geologist was very cheerful, and when he sensed our distrust, he began to rub in about some kind of injections. One thing is wrong with this guy. Not only did he detain us, but at the entrance the concierge yelled at us, looking like my grandfather’s mistress, as I remembered her from the age of four. The same bitch with a high hairstyle a la Catherine the Great. There was also a lady on crutches. She introduced herself as a journalist and voted for the journalist. I don’t know whether she’s a journalist or not, but I really liked her apartment. Firstly, there is no furniture, and secondly, the rooms are huge and there are many of them.

The end of the hike was two very interesting apartments. The first one is terribly smelly, with a blind pensioner. Besides her, her bearded son and grandson were in the apartment. Well, they stank! Not only is grandma bedridden, but they also decided to breed cats. While I was sitting in a wheelchair with a hole for a potty and patiently giving explanations, the bearded man managed to call one of the candidates, the one for whom the journalist on crutches voted, a prostitute, and a respected politician - an old fart. About twenty minutes later, caring children and grandchildren explained to the blind old woman who was who, and put a tick (whether where the grandmother said or not, I didn’t see), and we moved on.

The tired mother got dessert and immediately disappeared around the bend in the corridor, saying “I’ll wake you up now” as she went. She woke up, as it turned out, her son. The son was Caucasian by name, but looked like a drug addict. Losing weight is terrible! I don’t understand why he didn’t come himself? Probably my mother doesn’t let me out of the house.

Eight struck, and the moment came for the site to close. I rushed headlong to the buffet and in about five minutes ate a thousand sandwiches with cheese and something brown. While my mouth was full, the dry grum from the commission kept telling me about the benefits of black tea and how she drinks whole liters of it from a bowl in the morning on an empty stomach. In the word “piala,” grymza stubbornly put the emphasis on the last vowel. It turned out to be a “bowl”. In short, after five minutes I rushed away from the buffet from this aunt with her bowl, she was so sick of me.

The guy with the lips of Tom Berenger stopped holding the bag between his feet and turned out to be quite nice. We even chatted about something. A positive uncle, but he smells strange, like age or something. It happens that older men with bags smell of something special. It's not that unpleasant, but you don't want to inhale it.

While the votes were being counted, my eyes widened. I felt sleepy. My gaze constantly came across the huge eyes of the lady with the bowl. Her eyes were the size of glasses, and the glasses were apparently purchased during the Soviet disco era. Back then it was fashionable to wear huge ones. She's probably lonely. There has not yet been a hero ready to look into these eyes.

Meanwhile, one man from the commission, with his eyes bulging and his fist clenched, in a hissing whisper, proved to the pale green lady the correctness of his version of counting votes. The man looked like a spider: ears without lobes, small teeth, and mouse-like hair, and more likely even fluff than hair. His underpants were also visible. That is, not the panties themselves, but their uniform, the panties, through tight trousers. Briefs, like women's, are not family briefs or boxers. They cut into the ass and pick up the balls. No freedom, just constraint. I don't trust people wearing shorts like that.

Elvira Ivanova, candidate of pedagogical sciences: Gennady Yakovlevich Snegirev is a Muscovite, born on March 20, 1933. His father died in Stalin’s camps, his mother worked as a librarian at the locomotive depot of the October Railway. From childhood, the boy learned what need and hunger were. After elementary school, he studied at a vocational school (there were educational institutions at that time where teenagers were taught blue-collar professions). But I didn’t have to finish vocational school either: I had to earn a living.
At the age of thirteen, the future writer began working as a preparator's student at the Department of Ichthyology at Moscow University. And here he met a man who replaced his father - the scientist Vladimir Dmitrievich Lebedev.
Together - teacher and student - they treated fish, made excavations on Lake Peipsi, the site of the fish-eating tribes of the Quaternary period, studied fish bones and scales (it turns out that by scales, like by cutting a tree, you can determine how old a fish is). One day, in the absence of the teacher, the student for the first time bred a Far Eastern shrimp and an Amur goby fish in an aquarium. Here, at the university, G. Snegirev began boxing (boys need to be able to stand up for themselves), and although he was thin, if not skinny, of small stature, he became the champion of Moscow among youth flyweights. But, apparently, malnutrition and heavy physical exertion took their toll - at the age of sixteen he was diagnosed with a heart defect. The doctors said to lie down. He lay there for a year, then he decided: it was better to go on an ice voyage, where few people went, and set off with an ichthyological team on the expedition ship “Vityaz” in the winter of 1951/52 from Vladivostok through the ice-free Songara Strait in their ocean to the shores of Chukotka. The expedition studied deep-sea fish of the Okhotsk and Bering seas. The young explorer returned from the expedition healthy. Now he was interested in beavers. For a whole year he caught these amazing animals in the remote swamps of Belarus and transported them in freight cars for acclimatization to the Irtysh tributary, the Nazim River. I observed how they settled and lived, and later described them in a series of stories “The Beaver Hut”, “The Beaver Watchman”, “The Little Beaver”. And when he saw the results of his work, he went on a geological expedition to the Central Sayan Mountains, to Tuva.
In 1964, together with his teacher, now Professor Lebedev, Snegirev set off on an extraordinary expedition - on a lifeboat, without a motor, under sail, without food supplies, with only salt, sugar, a spinning rod for fishing and a carbine for hunting . Over the course of two summers, the travelers completed an experimental survival voyage along the Siberian Lena River, starting from the upper reaches and ending with the delta in the north of the Arctic. The experimenters not only survived, but also studied environmental changes in the Yakut taiga and the Lena River. The book “On the Cold River” was later written about this journey. Then there were many more trips: to the Kuril Islands, Kamchatka, the White Sea, Lake Teletskoye of the Altai Mountains, to Buryatia, Lenkoran and Voronezh reserves, and there were many professions: Snegirev drove reindeer with the reindeer herders of Chukotka, worked as a huntsman in the Kopetdag reserve of Southern Turkmenistan - but none of them became a matter of life, just as observations of the animal world did not result in scientific works, which colleagues from the university predicted.
Books became the work of life, which were born from oral stories to friends and comrades in the sports section. An acquaintance, poetess Veronika Tushnova, took the stories to the radio. There they were immediately taken and put on the air. At the same time, editors from Detgiz were looking for new interesting writers, and they were advised to pay attention to G. Snegirev on the radio.
His first book, “The Inhabited Island,” about the fauna of the Pacific Ocean, was published in 1954. Since then, there have been many books in different genres—stories, novellas, essays—that have enjoyed continued success and have been republished many times, because these books are amazing, filled with surprise and admiration for what they saw on their numerous travels...

The collection of stories "Little Monster" was born while traveling. Gennady Yakovlevich Snegirev traveled all over the country: from the Black Sea to the White Sea, from the desert to the tundra. Wildlife inhabitants became the main characters of the writer’s works.

The writer Gennady Yakovlevich Snegirev saw a lot and talked about it in his books. He saw a lot because he often and for a long time traveled on trains, ships, reindeer, and walked. And most importantly, because he knows how to see everything wonderful around him. That's how he's designed!
What does this mean - wonderful?
Some people are sure that there is nothing miraculous. It seems to them, these people, that they know everything in the world and everything in life is ordinary. Can some kind of mitten, or grass, or even a simple frog seem wonderful to someone?
Read this book and you will be convinced that there is nothing ordinary: the whole world is interesting, wonderful!

Read the book "Little Monster" online

Starling

I went for a walk in the forest. The forest is quiet, only sometimes you can hear the trees cracking from the frost.

The trees stand and do not move; there is a blanket of snow on the branches.

I kicked the tree and a whole snowdrift fell on my head. I began to shake off the snow, and I saw a girl coming. The snow is up to her knees. She rests a little and walks away again, looking up at the trees, looking for something.

Girl, what are you looking for?

The girl shuddered and looked at me:

I went out onto the path, I didn’t turn off the path into the forest, otherwise felt boots full of snow had accumulated. I walked a little, my feet were cold. Went home.

On the way back I saw that again this girl was walking ahead of me along the path quietly and crying. I caught up with her.

Why, I say, are you crying? Maybe I can help.

She looked at me, wiped away her tears and said:

Mom was airing the room, and Borka, the starling, flew out the window and flew into the forest. Now he will freeze at night!

Why were you silent before?

“I was afraid,” she says, “that you would catch Borka and take it for yourself.”

Together with the girl, we began to look for Borka. We must hurry: it is already getting dark, and at night the owl will eat Borka. The girl went one way, and I went the other. I inspect every tree, Borka is nowhere to be found. I was about to go back, suddenly I heard a girl shouting: “I found it, I found it!”

I run up to her - she stands near the tree and points up:

Here he is! Freeze, poor thing.

And a starling sits on a branch, feathers fluffed up, and looks at the girl with one eye.

The girl calls him:

Borya, come to me, good one!

But Borya just pressed himself against the tree and doesn’t want to go. Then I climbed up the tree to catch him.

I just reached the starling and wanted to grab it, but the starling flew over to the girl’s shoulder. She was delighted and hid it under her coat.

Otherwise,” he says, “by the time I get it home, it’ll freeze.”

We went home. It has already become dark, the lights in the houses are lit, there is still a little left to go. I ask the girl:

How long has your starling lived with you?

And she walks quickly, afraid that the starling under her coat will freeze. I follow the girl, trying to keep up.

We arrived at her house, the girl said goodbye to me.

Goodbye, she just told me.

I looked at her for a long time while she was clearing the snow from her felt boots on the porch, still waiting for the girl to tell me something else.

And the girl left and locked the door behind her.

Camel mitten

My mother knitted me mittens, warm ones, made of sheep’s wool.

One mitten was already ready, but mom only knitted the second one halfway - there wasn’t enough wool for the rest. It’s cold outside, the whole yard is covered in snow, they don’t let me walk without mittens - they’re afraid that I’ll freeze my hands. I’m sitting by the window, watching the tits jumping and quarreling on the birch tree: they probably couldn’t share the bug.

Mom said:

Wait until tomorrow: in the morning I’ll go to Aunt Dasha and ask for wool.

It’s good to say “see you tomorrow” to her when I want to go for a walk today! Uncle Fedya, the watchman, is coming from the yard towards us without mittens. But they don't let me in.

Uncle Fedya came in, shook off the snow with a broom and said:

Maria Ivanovna, they brought firewood there on camels. Will you take it? Good firewood, birch.

Mom got dressed and went with Uncle Fedya to look at the firewood, and I looked out of the window, I wanted to see the camels when they came out with the firewood.

Firewood was unloaded from one cart, the camel was taken out and tied at the fence. So big and shaggy. The humps are high, like hummocks in a swamp, and hang to one side. The camel's whole face is covered with frost, and he chews something with his lips all the time - probably he wants to spit.

I look at him, and I think: “Mom doesn’t have enough wool for mittens - it would be nice to cut the camel, just a little, so that it doesn’t freeze.”

I quickly put on my coat and felt boots. I found scissors in the chest of drawers, in the top drawer, where all sorts of threads and needles are, and went out into the yard. He approached the camel and stroked its side. The camel does nothing, just glances suspiciously and chews everything.

I climbed onto the shaft, and from the shaft I sat astride between the humps.

The camel turned to see who was fussing around there, but I was scared: he might spit on me or throw me to the ground. It's high!

I slowly took out a pair of scissors and began to trim the front hump, not all of it, but the very top of the head, where there is more hair.

I trimmed a whole pocket and started cutting from the second hump so that the humps were even. And the camel turned to me, stretched out its neck and sniffed the felt boot.

I was very scared: I thought he would bite my leg, but he just licked the felt boot and chewed again.

I straightened the second hump, went down to the ground and ran quickly into the house. I cut off a piece of bread, salted it and took it to the camel because he gave me wool. The camel first licked the salt and then ate the bread.

At this time, mother came, the wood was unloaded, the second camel was taken out, mine was untied, and everyone left.

My mother started scolding me at home:

What are you doing? You'll catch a cold without a hat!

I actually forgot to put on my hat. I took the wool out of my pocket and showed it to my mother - a whole bunch, just like sheep’s, only red.

Mom was surprised when I told her that the camel gave it to me.

Mom spun thread from this wool. It turned out to be a whole ball, it was enough to tie the mitten and there was still some left. And now I go for walks in new mittens. The left one is ordinary, and the right one is camel. She is half red, and when I look at her, I remember a camel.

Guinea pig

There is a fence behind our garden. I didn’t know who lived there before. I just recently found out. I was catching grasshoppers in the grass, and I saw an eye looking at me from a hole in the fence.

Who are you? - I ask.

But the eye is silent and keeps watching, spying on me. He looked and looked and then said:

And I have a guinea pig!

It became interesting to me: I know a simple pig, but I’ve never seen a guinea pig.

“My hedgehog,” I say, “was alive.” Why a guinea pig?

“I don’t know,” he says. - She probably lived in the sea before. I put her in the trough, but she was afraid of water, broke free and ran under the table!

I wanted to see a guinea pig.

“And what,” I say, “is your name?”

Seryozha. How are you?

We became friends with him.

Seryozha ran after the guinea pig, I looked through the hole behind him. He was gone for a long time. Seryozha came out of the house, carrying some kind of red rat in his hands.

“Here,” he says, “she didn’t want to go, she will have children soon: she doesn’t like to be touched on her stomach, she growls!”

Where is her little spot?

Seryozha is surprised:

What patch?

Like which one? All pigs have a spot on their nose!

No, when we bought it, it didn’t have a patch.

I began to ask Seryozha what he feeds the pig.

She, she says, loves carrots, but also drinks milk.

Before Seryozha had time to tell me everything, he was called home.

The next day I walked near the fence and looked through the hole: I thought Seryozha would come out and carry the pig out. But he never came out. The rain was dripping, and my mother probably didn’t let it in. I started walking around the garden and saw something red lying in the grass under a tree.

I came closer, and this was Seryozha’s guinea pig. I was happy, but I don’t understand how she got into our garden. I began to examine the fence, and there was a hole at the bottom. The pig must have crawled through this hole. I took her in my hands, she doesn’t bite, she just sniffs her fingers and sighs. All wet. I brought the pig home. I looked and looked for carrots, but I couldn’t find them. He gave her a cabbage stalk, she ate the stalk and fell asleep on the rug under the bed.

I sit on the floor, look at her and think: “What if Seryozha finds out who the pig lives with? No, he won’t find out: I won’t take it out into the street!”

I went out onto the porch and heard a car rumble somewhere nearby. I went up to the fence, looked through the hole, and there was a truck standing in Seryozha’s yard, things were being loaded onto it. Seryozha is rummaging around with a stick under the porch - probably looking for a guinea pig. Seryozha’s mother put pillows in the car and said:

Seryozha! Hurry up, put on your coat, let's go now!

Seryozha cried:

No, I won't go until I find the pig! She will have children soon, she is probably hiding under the house!

I felt sorry for Seryozha, I called him to the fence.

Seryozha, I say, who are you looking for?

Seryozha came up, and he was still crying:

My pig has disappeared, and now I have to leave!

I tell him:

I have your pig, she ran into our garden. I'll bring it to you now.

Oh,” he says, “how good!” And I was thinking: where did she go?

I brought him a pig and slipped it under the fence.

Seryozha’s mother is calling, the car is already humming.

Seryozha grabbed the pig and said to me:

You know? I will definitely give you a little pig when she gives birth to children. Goodbye!

Seryozha got into the car, his mother covered him with a raincoat because it started to rain.

Seryozha also covered the pig with a cloak. As the car drove away, Seryozha waved his hand at me and shouted something I couldn’t understand - probably about a pig.

Wonderful boat

I was tired of living in the city, and in the spring I went to the village to visit a fisherman I knew, Mikhei. Mikheev's house stood on the very bank of the Severka River.

As soon as it was light, Micah set off on a boat to go fishing. There were huge pikes in Severka. They kept all the fish at bay: they came across roaches straight from the pike’s mouth - the scales on their sides were torn off, as if they had been scratched by a comb.

Every year Micah threatened to go to the city for pike lures, but he just couldn’t get it together.

But one day Micah returned from the river angry, without fish. He silently dragged the boat into the burdocks, told me not to let the neighbor’s kids in, and went to town to get some lures.

I sat by the window and watched a wagtail run around the boat.

Then the wagtail flew away and the neighbor's guys approached the boat: Vitya and his sister Tanya. Vitya examined the boat and began to drag it towards the water. Tanya sucked her finger and looked at Vitya. Vitya shouted at her, and together they pushed the boat into the water.

Then I left the house and said that it was impossible to take the boat.

Why? - Vitya asked.

I didn't know why.

Because,” I said, “this boat is wonderful!”

Tanya took her finger out of her mouth.

Why is she wonderful?

We’ll just get to the turn and back,” said Vitya.

It was a long way to the river turn, and while the guys swam back and forth, I kept coming up with something wonderful and surprising.

An hour has passed. The guys came back, but I still couldn’t come up with anything.

Well, - Vitya asked, - why is she wonderful? A simple boat, it even ran aground once and is leaking!

Yes, why is she wonderful? - asked Tanya.

Didn't you notice anything? - I said, and I tried to quickly come up with something.

No, we didn’t notice anything,” Vitya said sarcastically.

Of course, nothing! - Tanya said angrily.

So, that means you didn’t notice anything? - I asked loudly, but I myself wanted to run away from the guys.

Vitya fell silent and began to remember. Tanya wrinkled her nose and also began to remember.

We saw traces of a heron in the sand,” Tanya said timidly.

We also saw how it was swimming, only its head was sticking out of the water,” said Vitya.

Then they remembered that the water buckwheat had bloomed, and they also saw a white water lily bud under the water. Vitya told how a flock of fry jumped out of the water to escape the pike. And Tanya caught a big snail, and there was also a small snail sitting on the snail...

Isn't all this wonderful? - I asked.

Vitya thought and said:

Wonderful!

Tanya laughed and shouted:

How wonderful!

Uka

I was picking cranberries in the swamp. I’ve collected half a basket, and the sun is already low: it’s peeking out from behind the forest, about to disappear.

My back was a little tired, I straightened up, and I saw a heron fly by. Probably to sleep. She has been living in the swamp for a long time, I always see her when she flies by.

The sun has already set, but it is still light, the sky in that place is red-red. It’s quiet all around, only someone shouts in the reeds, not very loudly, but you can hear it far away: “Uk!” He waits a little and again: “Uk!”

Who is this? I had heard this scream before, but I didn’t pay attention. And now I somehow became curious: maybe it’s a heron that screams like that?

I began to walk around this place where the scream was heard. It's really close and screaming, but no one is there. It will be dark soon. Time to go home. I only walked a little - and suddenly the screaming stopped, I couldn’t hear it anymore.

“Aha,” I think, “that means it’s here!” I hid, stood quietly, so as not to frighten off. He stood for a long time, finally on a hummock, very close, and responded: “Uk!” - and again silence.

I sat down to take a better look, and I saw that the frog was sitting and not moving. She's so small, but she screams so loud!

I caught her, hold her in my hand, but she doesn’t even break free. Its back is gray, and its belly is red-red, like the sky above the forest where the sun has set. I put it in my pocket, took the basket of cranberries, and went home. They had already turned on the lights in our windows; they had probably sat down to dinner.

I came home and my grandfather asked me:

Where did you go?

I caught a bite.

He does not understand.

“What kind of scolding is this,” he says?

I reached into my pocket to show it, but the pocket was empty, only a little wet. “Uh,” I think, “nasty Uka! I wanted to show her to my grandfather, but she ran away!”

Grandfather, I say, well, you know, Uka is like that - she’s always screaming in the swamp in the evening, with a red belly.

Grandpa doesn't understand.

“Sit down,” he says, “eat and go to bed, we’ll sort it out tomorrow.”

I got up in the morning and walked around all day, thinking about Uka: has she returned to the swamp or not?

In the evening I went again to the same place where I caught Uku. He stood there for a long time, listening to everything to see if he would scream.

"Uk!" - she shouted somewhere behind. I looked for it and looked for it, but never found it. If you come closer, it’s silent. If you move away, he starts screaming again. She probably hid under a mound.

I got tired of looking for her, so I went home.

But now I know who is hooting so loudly in the swamp in the evening. This is not a heron, but a little Uka with a red belly.

Sly Chipmunk

I built myself a tent in the taiga. This is not a house or a forest hut, but simply long sticks folded together. There is bark on the sticks, and logs on the bark so that pieces of bark are not blown away by the wind.

I began to notice that someone was leaving pine nuts in the tent.

I couldn’t guess who was eating nuts in my chum without me. It even became scary.

But then one day a cold wind blew, drove up the clouds, and during the day it became completely dark due to the bad weather.

I quickly climbed into the tent, looked, and my place was already taken.

A chipmunk sits in the darkest corner. A chipmunk has a sack of nuts behind each cheek.

Such thick cheeks, slitted eyes. He looks at me, afraid to spit out the nuts on the ground: he thinks that I will steal them.

The chipmunk endured it, endured it, and spat out all the nuts. And immediately his cheeks became thinner.

I counted seventeen nuts on the ground.

The chipmunk was afraid at first, but then he saw that I was sitting calmly and began to stuff nuts into the cracks and under the logs.

When the chipmunk ran away, I looked - nuts were stuffed everywhere, large, yellow. Apparently, the chipmunk has built a storage room in my tent.

How cunning this chipmunk is! In the forest, squirrels and jays will steal all his nuts. And the chipmunk knows that not a single thieving jay will get into my tent, so he brought his supplies to me. And I was no longer surprised if I found nuts in the plague. I knew that a cunning chipmunk lived with me.

Beaver

In the spring, the snow quickly melted, the water rose and flooded the beaver's hut.

The beavers dragged the beaver cubs onto dry leaves, but the water rose even higher, and the beaver cubs had to swim away in different directions.

The smallest beaver was exhausted and began to drown.

I noticed him and pulled him out of the water. I thought it was a water rat, and then I saw the tail with a spatula, and I guessed that it was a beaver.

At home, he spent a long time cleaning and drying himself, then he found a broom behind the stove, sat down on his hind legs, took a twig from the broom with his front legs and began to gnaw on it.

After eating, the beaver collected all the sticks and leaves, tucked it under itself and fell asleep.

I listened to the little beaver snoring in his sleep. “Here,” I think, “what a calm animal - you can leave him alone, nothing will happen!”

He locked the little beaver in the hut and went into the forest.

All night I wandered through the forest with a gun, and in the morning I returned home, opened the door, and...

What is it? It was like I was in a carpentry shop!

There are white shavings lying all over the floor, and the table has a thin, thin leg: a beaver has gnawed it from all sides. And he hid behind the stove.

During the night the water subsided. I put the beaver in a bag and quickly took it to the river.

Ever since I see a tree felled by beavers in the forest, I immediately think about the little beaver that chewed up my table.

Night bells

I really wanted to see the deer: to see how it eats grass, how it stands motionless and listens to the silence of the forest.

One day I approached a doe with a fawn, but they sensed me and ran away into the red autumn grasses. I recognized it from the tracks. There they were: the tracks in the swamp were filling with water before my eyes.

I heard deer trumpeting at night. Somewhere far away a deer will trumpet, but it echoes along the river, and it seems very close.

Finally, in the mountains I came across a deer trail. The deer trampled it to a lonely cedar. The ground near the cedar was salty, and deer came at night to lick the salt.

I hid behind a rock and waited. At night the moon was shining and there was frost. I dozed off.

I woke up from a quiet ringing.

It was as if glass bells were ringing. A deer walked past me along the path.

I never got a good look at the deer, I only heard how the ground rang under his hooves with every step.

Overnight, thin ice stalks grew from the frost.

They grew straight from the ground. The deer smashed them with his hooves, and they rang like glass bells.

When the sun rose, the ice stalks melted.

Little monster

Our ship was sailing in the Gulf of Anadyr. It was night. I was standing at the stern. The ice floes rustled over the sides and broke. A strong wind and snow were blowing, but the sea was calm, the heavy ice did not allow it to rage. The ship made its way between the ice floes at low speed. The ice fields will begin soon. The captain steered the ship carefully so as not to crash into the ice.

Suddenly I heard something splashing right next to the side, even the ship rocked on the wave.

I look: some kind of monster is overboard. It will float away, then come closer and sigh heavily. It disappeared, appeared in front of the ship, surfaced at the very stern, the water glowing with green light from its splashes.

Whale! I can’t figure out which one.

All night he swam behind the ship and sighed.

And at dawn I saw him: his head was blunt, like a sledgehammer, no other animal had such a long head, his eyes were tiny, and there was only one nostril. He will stick her out of the water, release a fountain of steam, sigh heavily and go under the water again.

This is a young sperm whale.

Then the captain woke up and went out on deck.

I asked him:

Why is he swimming after us?

Yes, that’s right, he mistook our ship for a whale. Still young, the milk on his lips has not dried. And apparently, he fell behind his mother, from his herd. As autumn storms begin, all sperm whales move towards the equator.

While the captain was talking, the sperm whale fell behind the ship and swam south. Its fountain was visible for a long time between the ice, then disappeared.

“Equator went looking,” said the captain.

Here even I sighed: will this little monster find his mother?

Belek

Everywhere you look, there is only ice all around. White, greenish, shiny in the sun. I began to peer into the narrow strip of water that our ship cut through the ice.

And suddenly I saw two black eyes. They looked at me from an ice floe that slowly floated past.

Stop! Stop! Someone's overboard! - I shouted.

The ship slowed down and stopped. I had to lower the boat and return to the ice floe.

The ice floe was covered with sparkling snow. And on the snow, as if on a blanket, lay a squirrel - a baby seal.

Seals leave their babies on the ice, and only in the morning the mother swims up to the baby, feeds him milk and swims away again, and he lies on the ice all day, all white, soft, like a plush. And if it weren’t for his big black eyes, I wouldn’t have noticed him.

I brought him a bottle of milk, but he didn’t drink the squirrel, but crawled to the side. I pulled him back, and suddenly, first one tear rolled out of his eyes, then a second, and they started to fall like hail. Belek cried silently. The sailors made a noise and said that they should quickly put him on that ice floe. Let's go to the captain. The captain grumbled and grumbled, but still turned the ship around. The ice had not yet closed, and along the water path we came to the old place. There the squirrel was again placed on a blanket of snow, only on another ice floe. He almost stopped crying. Our ship sailed on.

Octopuses

In the spring, warm fogs began to undermine the ice floes. And when it got completely warm, a butterfly flew onto the deck with the onshore wind.

I caught her, brought her to the cabin and began to remember how in the spring the finches sing in the forest and hedgehogs run in the clearings.

“It would be nice,” I think, “to catch a hedgehog! But where can you catch it in the North Sea?”

And instead of a hedgehog, I got a little octopus: it got entangled in the net with the fish.

I put the octopus in a jam jar and put the jar on the table.

So he lived in my jar of octopuses. I do something, and he hides behind a pebble and spies on me. Gray pebble and gray octopus. The sun will illuminate it and it will turn yellow, that’s how it camouflages itself.

One day I was reading a book. At first he sat quietly, and then began to quickly turn through the pages.

The octopus suddenly turned red, then yellow, then green. He got scared when the pages began to flash.

Can a hedgehog really do that? He just pricks and snorts.

I once laid a green scarf under a jar - and the octopus turned green.

Once I put a jar with an octopus on a chessboard, and the octopus didn’t know which one to be - white or black? And then he got angry and blushed.

But I didn't make him angry anymore. And when real summer came, I released the octopus into an underwater clearing, where the water was shallower and warmer: after all, he was still very small!

Starling
Camel mitten
Guinea pig
Wonderful boat
Uka
Sly Chipmunk
Beaver
Night bells
Little monster
Belek
Octopuses

Moscow "Children's literature" 1975. Drawings by N. Charushin

Snegirev Gennady Yakovlevich (March 20, 1933, Moscow - January 14, 2004)
Gennady Yakovlevich Snegirev is a Muscovite, born on March 20, 1933. His father died in Stalin’s camps, his mother worked as a librarian at the locomotive depot of the October Railway. From childhood, the boy learned what need and hunger were. After elementary school, he studied at a vocational school (there were educational institutions at that time where teenagers were taught blue-collar professions). But I didn’t have to finish vocational school either: I had to earn a living.

At the age of thirteen, the future writer began working as a preparator's student at the Department of Ichthyology at Moscow University. And here he met a man who replaced his father - the scientist Vladimir Dmitrievich Lebedev.

Together - teacher and student - they treated fish, made excavations on Lake Peipsi, the site of the fish-eating tribes of the Quaternary period, studied fish bones and scales (it turns out that by scales, like by cutting a tree, you can determine how old a fish is). One day, in the absence of the teacher, the student for the first time bred a Far Eastern shrimp and an Amur goby fish in an aquarium. Here, at the university, G. Snegirev began boxing (boys need to be able to stand up for themselves), and although he was thin, if not skinny, of small stature, he became the champion of Moscow among youth flyweights. But, apparently, malnutrition and heavy physical exertion took their toll - at the age of sixteen he was diagnosed with a heart defect. The doctors said to lie down. He lay there for a year, then he decided: it was better to go on an ice voyage, where few people went, and set off with an ichthyological team on the expedition ship “Vityaz” in the winter of 1951/52 from Vladivostok through the ice-free Songara Strait in the Pacific Ocean to the shores of Chukotka. The expedition studied deep-sea fish of the Okhotsk and Bering seas. The young explorer returned from the expedition healthy. Now he was interested in beavers. For a whole year he caught these amazing animals in the remote swamps of Belarus and transported them in freight cars for acclimatization to the Irtysh tributary, the Nazim River. I observed how they settled and lived, and later described them in a series of stories “The Beaver Hut”, “The Beaver Watchman”, “The Little Beaver”. And when he saw the results of his work, he went on a geological expedition to the Central Sayan Mountains, to Tuva.

In 1964, together with his teacher, now Professor Lebedev, Snegirev set off on an extraordinary expedition - on a lifeboat, without a motor, under sail, without food supplies, with only salt, sugar, a spinning rod for fishing and a carbine for hunting . Over the course of two summers, the travelers completed an experimental survival voyage along the Siberian Lena River, starting from the upper reaches and ending with the delta in the north of the Arctic. The experimenters not only survived, but also studied environmental changes in the Yakut taiga and the Lena River. The book “On the Cold River” was later written about this journey. Then there were many more trips: to the Kuril Islands, Kamchatka, the White Sea, Lake Teletskoye of the Altai Mountains, to Buryatia, Lenkoran and Voronezh reserves, and there were many professions: Snegirev drove reindeer with the reindeer herders of Chukotka, worked as a huntsman in the Kopetdag reserve of Southern Turkmenistan - but none of them became a matter of life, just as observations of the animal world did not result in scientific works, which colleagues from the university predicted.
Books became the work of life, which were born from oral stories to friends and comrades in the sports section. An acquaintance, poetess Veronika Tushnova, took the stories to the radio. There they were immediately taken and put on the air. At the same time, editors from Detgiz were looking for new interesting writers, and they were advised to pay attention to G. Snegirev on the radio.

His first book, “The Inhabited Island,” about the fauna of the Pacific Ocean, was published in 1954. Since then, there have been many books in different genres—stories, novellas, essays—that have enjoyed continued success and have been republished many times, because these books are amazing, filled with surprise and admiration for what they saw on their numerous travels...

GENNADY YAKOVLEVICH SNEGIREV

Dates of life: March 20, 1933 - January 14, 2004
Place of Birth : Moscow city
Russian Soviet writer
Famous works : “Inhabited Island”, “About Deer”, “About Penguins”, “In the Reserve”, “First Sun”, “Beaver Lodge”

Gennady Yakovlevich Snegirev is a Muscovite, born on March 20, 1933. His father died in Stalin’s camps, his mother worked as a librarian at the locomotive depot of the October Railway. From childhood, the boy learned what need and hunger were. After elementary school, he studied at a vocational school (there were educational institutions at that time where teenagers were taught blue-collar professions). But I didn’t have to finish vocational school either: I had to earn a living.
At the age of thirteen, the future writer began working as a preparator's student at the Department of Ichthyology at Moscow University. And here he met a man who replaced his father - the scientist Vladimir Dmitrievich Lebedev.
Together - teacher and student - they treated fish, made excavations on Lake Peipsi, the site of the fish-eating tribes of the Quaternary period, studied fish bones and scales (it turns out that by scales, like by cutting a tree, you can determine how old a fish is).
Here, at the university, G. Snegirev began to practice boxing, although he was thin, if not skinny, of small stature, and became the champion of Moscow among youth flyweights. But, apparently, malnutrition and heavy physical exertion took their toll - at the age of sixteen he was diagnosed with a heart defect. The doctors said to lie down. He lay there for a year, then he decided: it was better to go on an ice voyage, where few people went, and set off with an ichthyological team on the expedition ship “Vityaz” in the winter of 1951 from Vladivostok through the ice-free Songara Strait in the Pacific Ocean to the shores of Chukotka. The young explorer returned from the expedition healthy. Now he was interested in beavers. For a whole year he caught these amazing animals in the remote swamps of Belarus and transported them in freight cars for acclimatization to the Irtysh tributary, the Nazim River. I observed how they settled and lived, and later described them in a series of stories “The Beaver Hut”, “The Beaver Watchman”, “The Little Beaver”. And when he saw the results of his work, he went on a geological expedition to the Central Sayan Mountains, to Tuva.
In 1964, together with his teacher, now Professor Lebedev, Snegirev set off on an extraordinary expedition - on a lifeboat, without a motor, under sail, without food supplies, with only salt, sugar, a spinning rod for fishing and a carbine for hunting . Over the course of two summers, the travelers completed an experimental survival voyage along the Siberian Lena River, starting from the upper reaches and ending with the delta in the north of the Arctic. The experimenters not only survived, but also studied environmental changes in the Yakut taiga and the Lena River. The book “On the Cold River” was later written about this journey.
Then there were many more trips: to the Kuril Islands, Kamchatka, the White Sea, Lake Teletskoye of the Altai Mountains, to Buryatia, Lenkoran and Voronezh reserves, and there were many professions: Snegirev drove reindeer with the reindeer herders of Chukotka, worked as a huntsman in the Kopetdag reserve of Southern Turkmenistan - but none of them became a matter of life, just as observations of the animal world did not result in scientific works, which colleagues from the university predicted.
Books became the work of life, which were born from oral stories to friends and comrades in the sports section. An acquaintance, poetess Veronika Tushnova, took the stories to the radio. There they were immediately taken and put on the air. At the same time, editors from Detgiz were looking for new interesting writers, and they were advised to pay attention to G. Snegirev on the radio.
His first book, “The Inhabited Island,” about the fauna of the Pacific Ocean, was published in 1954. Since then, there have been many books in different genres—stories, novellas, essays—that have enjoyed continued success and have been republished many times, because these books are amazing, filled with surprise and admiration for what they saw on their numerous travels...

GENNADY YAKOVLEVICH SNEGIREV

Gennady Snegirev is considered a natural scientist and a master of educational literature. In fact, he is a real poet, only he writes his poems in prose. There are no works in our children's literature of such crystal purity and touching transparency as Snegirev's. He knew how to create such an unusual and memorable picture using simple means, briefly, without deliberate beauty, that you see far into the depths, much more than what was said.
Gennady Snegirev was born in Moscow, on Chistye Prudy. Apparently, he was an unusual child, as they used to say, “difficult” - he completed three classes, but “they counted me four, if only I left evening school.” During the evacuation he was a shepherd. There, near Chapaevsk, he forever remembered the beauty of the Volga steppe.
Returning to Moscow, he accidentally got a job at the Department of Ichthyology at Moscow State University. There he received his education - communicating with old intellectuals, scientists, sages, experts on everything in the world. Among them was Professor Lebedev, the famous polar pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union, an outstanding personality. “Once I was traveling with him without a ticket, he put a mattress on me, and he lay down on it,” Snegirev recalled with delight. Don’t get lost, don’t despair, look for a way out of any situation - these lessons came in handy for the young man very soon. He was involved in boxing, and one day he went out to fight with a sore throat, after which he received a serious complication of his heart. I lay there for two years, then got up and decided: “It’s hit or miss” - either I’ll recover or I’ll die. He hired himself as a laboratory assistant on the Vityaz, a research vessel that was sent to study the deep-sea fish of the Kuril-Kamchatka depression. The illness subsided, and numerous impressions from this and other travels soon became books for children. Among them are “Inhabited Island”, “Beaver Hut”, “Lumpkin”, “Storm Storm”, “Lampanidus”, “Clever Porcupine”, “Cunning Chipmunk”, “Little Monster” and others.
In the stories about an old hunting dog, about her funny friendship and enmity with a little boy, the characters of the main characters are drawn in short strokes. Here is Chembulak, a smart dog, a hunting professional: “As soon as Chembulak sees the gun, he immediately begins to walk around his grandfather and shows his teeth.
That's how he smiles.
Grandfather is cleaning his gun, and Chembulak is still smiling, because he is always taken hunting, but I am not.”
Also, based on one expressive detail, you can get an idea of ​​the character of the main character, a brave and inquisitive boy:“I helped my grandfather pack his things into a bag. First we put a blanket, then millet, and on top - a saucepan and a kettle. Grandfather put bread in the saucepan, and salt and an iron jar with matches in the kettle.
I asked why the matches were in a jar.
Grandfather said:
- If the bag falls into the river, everything will get wet, but the matches will be dry. You can light a fire and dry everything out.
- Grandfather, will we also fall into the river?
Grandfather thought and said that we too could fall into the river. Twhen I wanted to hunt even more.”
It’s not just that the relationship between the boy and the dog develops, the hero understands that friendship must be earned, and in the end they become friends.
Each new meeting with animals and birds gives the child hero new knowledge and impressions. He saw a camel and wanted to borrow some wool from it for mittens, but he was afraid: the camel was “so big and shaggy. The humps are high, like hummocks in a swamp, and hang to one side. The camel’s whole face is covered with frost, and he chews something with his lips all the time - probably he wants to spit.” The boy overcame his fear, climbed onto the camel and carefully cut a little wool - he trimmed both humps. Then he thanked the camel and brought him bread and salt. And he got a new mitten - half red. “And when I look at her, I remember the camel,” the boy ends the story with a feeling of warmth.
The encounters with the inhabitants of the animal kingdom are unexpected, and the words that the author finds for them are also unexpected. I saw a frog in the swamp: “It’s very small, but it screams so loudly!” I caught her, hold her in my hand, but she doesn’t even break free. Its back is gray, and its belly is red-red, like the sky above the forest where the sun has set.”
The writer believes: “In order to write for children, and even for adults, you need to know life very well and have an ear for the language.”
Korf, O.B. Children about writers. XX century. From A to Z /O.B. Corf.- M.: Strelets, 2006.- P.32-33., ill.

I met him in Murzilka almost forty years ago. For almost forty years I have been listening to this incomparable storyteller, for almost forty years I have been experiencing difficult happiness, drawing illustrations for his books.
Snegirev is an experienced man. He sailed as a sailor on the scientific ship “Vityaz”, sailed across the Siberian Lena River in a boat, and participated in many expeditions. He had to ride a reindeer, a horse, a donkey, a camel, and a yak. He saw and experienced a lot - at sea, in the taiga, in the tundra, in the steppe. But in order to turn the impressions accumulated during travel into a literary work, you need to be Prishvin or Bianchi - or Snegirev. Since no one has ever written about Snegirev about nature,” said Paustovsky. He writes very responsibly, very succinctly. There are few words, but each one is used in such a way that neither subtracts nor adds, so this writer’s prose is as captivating as music.
Many wonderful artists illustrated Snegirev’s books and, above all, of course, May Petrovich Miturich, who visited him in the Far East, in the Siberian taiga, and in Central Asia. I am grateful to fate that I also had to draw quite a lot for Gennady Yakovlevich’s stories. I had to go with him on an unforgettable trip to Turkmenistan, where there is red earth, thickets of pistachios, goitered gazelles, porcupines, jackals crying at night... And the stars are huge!
Snegirev writes how beautiful and powerful nature is, and how, in essence, it is fragile and defenseless, and how we must take care of it.
“Admire nature, but do not harm it! Use her gifts, but take care of her." - he tells his readers.

Nikolai Ustinov, People's Artist of Russia