Научная статья на тему 'In search of the origins of the Ukrainian game children’s book'

In search of the origins of the Ukrainian game children’s book Текст научной статьи по специальности «Языкознание и литературоведение»

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Ключевые слова
TOY-BOOK / GAME BOOK FOR CHILDREN / GAME PUBLICATIONS / GAME-BOOK / ARCHITECTURE OF CHILDREN'S BOOKS

Аннотация научной статьи по языкознанию и литературоведению, автор научной работы — Kasianenko Karolina Mihailovna

The article is a retrospective analysis of Ukrainian children’s books of playing directivity. The factors and conditions that contributed to the formation of the national children’s book have been identified and the basic types of book editions that influenced the formation this type of books have been detected.

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Текст научной работы на тему «In search of the origins of the Ukrainian game children’s book»

Section 4. Study of art and cultural studies

Section 4. Study of art and cultural studies

Kasianenko Karolina Mihailovna, the applicant Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts E-mail: Sternikas@mail.ru

In search of the origins of the Ukrainian game children’s book

Abstract: The article is a retrospective analysis of Ukrainian children’s books of playing directivity. The factors and conditions that contributed to the formation of the national children’s book have been identified and the basic types of book editions that influenced the formation this type of books have been detected.

Keywords: toy-book, game book for children, game publications, game-book, architecture of children’s books.

Children’s book in the historical dimension is a young product, but it occupies a prominent place in the history ofbook art in terms of its production and existence. Having absorbed long-standing traditions of book production starting from manuscripts, the miniature portrait of Kiev Rus’ and the first printed primer by I. Fedorov (1574), children’s book has been developed and enriched with new forms of artistic expression. At the beginning of the XXI century in the field of domestic typography there was formed an industry of producing books with game characteristics and book adjoining objects: a new generation of toy-books with various subject-toy applications, books to bathe with, to sleep with, to play music with, to listen to or to rumple.

As perhaps the most important children’s edition, which at an early stage of development forms the first child’s ideas of the surrounding world and attracts it to the arts, the game book still gaps in field of art. One aspect of this problem is the lack of works on the history of formation of the national game book (toy-book). The research of the origins of this type of book provides a certain increase of knowledge in the socio-cultural understanding of the development of children book forms and expands the range questions on art content.

In scientific works devoted to the history of children’s literature and the development of Ukrainian children’s books (by N. Verny-hora, M. Halushko, O. Drozdovska, T. Kivshar, H. Kornyeyeva, N. Marchenko, etc.) we find no mention of children’s book to play with. Indirect connection with the subject of our research in terms of our cultural and anthropological and pedagogical principles have the works dedicated to the alphabet (by I. Kozak, T. Lubenets, S. Ruso-va, K. Ushynsky) and to the establishment of the first children’s magazines (by L. Kusyy, V. Perederiy, M. Siropolko, B. Stebelsky).

The aim of the study is to conduct a retrospective review of printed children’s literature to identify the prerequisites, the trends and the factors that influenced the formation of game children’s book with its original architecture.

The development of Ukrainian children’s books and especially books of game character, in contrast to European and Russian editions were restrained by complicated socio-political conditions. The home children’s book appeared only in the second half of the nineteenth century in form of a modestly illustrated literary publication, which by its colors, shapes, quantity and quality of illustrations badly lagged behind the European publications for children. At the times of Royal Russia the Ukrainian children’s literature was “peripheral

literature, while it was still restricted by various decrees by Yemsky and Valuev" [8, 71]. The exception was the «Tales», a H. H. Andersen’s book translated by M. Starytsky, with color lithographic illustrations by M. Murashka (Kyiv, 1873) and the tales by Ivan Franko: «Fox named Nikita» and «The Adventures of Don Quixote» with pictures by T. Kopystynsky (Lviv, 1891).

The sheet primer (uvrazha-book) and the «amusement sheets» that had similarities in the nature of reading can be considered the first Ukrainian and Russian game editions for children. By the modern standards the «amusement sheets» (XVII-XVIII) can be classified as a pictorial sheet publication whose content (short text or absence of the latter) was transferred by means of graphic art [4]. The connection of the “amusing pages" with children’s books also includes the style of the images and the function of these publications. A uvrazha-book the ABC, by K. Istomin, 1692 is a fine art edition of an album type, consisting of a cover and several illustrated sheets, not sewn together into a book block. According to the classification by S. Havenko and M. Martynyuk it can be considered a prefabricated book or a book-kit [3]. That very lack of fixed book construction in the first graphic editions and the arbitrariness of the information study sequence contained in them provided them the game character.

While Europe’s first illustrated books for children that combined education, game and entertainment (like “A cute little pocket book" by D. Nyuberi, London, 1744), or moving parts, like hinged valves («lift-the-flap»), (see the R. Sayer’s “Harleguinades", London, 1765), all appeared in the middle of the XVIII century, on the territory of the Royal Russia illustrated children’s books of original architecture, the miniature books, arose only in the nineteenth century.

The mini sheet alphabet books stand out among them: the ABC «The peoples of the world», 1810, the «Terebenovska ABC», 1814. They had an unusual design for the book material: a cardboard case-title in which separate sheets of graphics cards where enclosed. Thus, the «The peoples of the world», with its 110x70mm format, consisted of 30 cards with watercolor prints in the bast style. The Ukrainian mini-book would appear only in the twentieth century as a literary and artistic publication. Within 20 years of the twentieth century Kiev publishing house “Culture" was regularly producing books in a small format (110x130mm) in the series such as “Babylibrary" and “Library for the kiddies." The reduction of the books to pocket size drew them nearer to toys. However, the nineteenth

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and the early twentieth century Ukrainian primers of Galicia and eastern Ukraine were issued the traditional book form and were poorly illustrated [6]. Albeit, among traditional by their book form and educational material there stand out a few primers. They are the “People's School" (Lviv, 1894) and the “Ukrainian grammar for science and writing" by B. Grinchenko (Kyiv, 1907), in which teaching and educational function of the publication were combined with a certain aesthetic and entertainment functions. The appearance of the visual material in the ABCs, such as scene pictures, objective pictures with captions, as well as the literary material as sayings, riddles, folk poetry and even authorial short stories (by B. Grinchenko) shows the emergence of a new educational technology, a gaming one, that takes into account the age characteristics of children development and promotes a more effective student mastery of knowledge. An important role in this process was played by the fruitful work and pedagogical research of K. Ushynsky, who extensively used comprehensible, interesting and logical by their content tales, proverbs, and tongue-twisters in the academic literature of the 60th in the nineteenth century [11].

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, illustration gradually became a defining feature of Ukrainian children's books, and the quantity of text was diminished. Domestic picture books were born under severe conditions of the First World War. In Western Ukraine A. Krushelnytsky became their founder. B. Stebelsky, a researcher, notes that at that time there were no means of getting richly colored editions, so for the books in the library “For our youngest" Krushelnytsky deliberately picked only short folk tales, which had meaningful one color illustrations on each page made by O. Kulchytska, an artist who worked “adapting to the modest requirements of publications... using the most economical means" [8, 76]. Subsequently, picture books started to be appear in the M. Taranko's book-publishing house and the Ya.Orenshtayma's «Galician publishing house». Their books were the most popular among kids. In the early 20's the Taranko's book-publishing house released around forty books for preschool children in Galicia [5]. After the October Revolution picture book edition was conducted by the Kiev publishing houses «Culture», «State Publishing House of Ukraine», and «Snowdrops».

On the last page of children's books of this period there can be found didactic questions, riddles, various puzzles and answers to them. Example of this is “Sirko" tale with illustrations by P. Lapyn (“Time", Kyiv, 1920). Their modest presence in the literary and artistic edition expanded the instructive and educational functions of books. More boldly the entertaining and gaming materials, such as songs with sheet music and drawings of movements to them, games and jokes, poems, stories, witty two-color illustrations, riddles, puzzles, crossword puzzles and math problems, that encouraged children to read and to acquire knowledge, came into use later on in the weekly “Bell" edited by writer Y. Shkrumeliuk (Lviv, 1931-1939) [8, 10].

Having occupied the main place in the children's book, graphic illustration showed more and more synthesis of basic functions (aesthetic, educational, cognitive and visual) based on gaming or entertainment component. K. Ushynsky's thoughts regarding the specific of perception of the world by a child, who «in general thinks shapes, colors, sounds, and sensations» [11, 343], are supported by the art critic B. Butnyk-Siversky. In the 1929 «Principles of illustrating children's books» monograph, the author emphasizes the necessity of likening the graphic images to the world of children, taking into account the age-specific psychophysiological features [1]. Ohrim Sudomora in his «Beetles and Mushrooms War» book

(edited by «Time», Kyiv, 1919) was one of the first artists who «drew near to the pedagogical and psychological definitions of children mentality, their perception and understanding of illustration» [8, 78].

Reinterpretation of the expressive possibilities of artistic language of illustration and the way information is presented is brightly seen in the children's picture-book production of the 20's and 30's, where the graphics suggested various machinery and various industrial production possibilities. The books of this period represented a kind of a cognitive-entertaining game with visual images and picture comments. Unlike the books with purely industrial theme created by the Russian colleagues, the Ukrainian production books from the «Culture» publishing house had their own specifics. Kiev artists delicately familiarized children with manufacture. The books did not contain any perspective images of industrial workshops. The laconic style of illustrations by the artists like B. Yermolenko («The screamer», 1931), Ye.Rachev («Who's craftier?», 1930), the multicolor as good as bast prints with national tonality by I. Kysil («Tea», 1929), and the color print techniques on B. Kryukov's cardboard («Fire department», 1930) revealed the topic in an accessible form and extremely emotionally, sometimes in a game style. Introducing such a constructive addition as folding flap in the middle facing pages into the bloc of the Russian industrial children's book «Bakery № 3 » (1930) was a progressive innovation in Soviet children's book production, and today is a widespread interactive tool of Ukrainian children's playing publications. In Galicia in those years M. Taranko launched a comic-book and became the author-compiler of the first scripts for children's school celebrations and events [7].

In the 20's the appearance of first coloring books that came out in the series «Little Artist» (by «Culture») announced the formation of a group of books that declared a new method of children's active exploration of the world, method that involved creative, artistic and practical activities within the book.

There were not detected any books of original architecture with design implementation (cutting, creasing, etc.) or didactic applications which provided artistic, practical or other interactive activities (besides drawing) published by Ukrainian publishers in pre-war times. While in Moscow up to the 20's there had been craft books and figure books, in the 30's there were toy books, like «The Zoo on the table» (by the artists V. Yermolayeva and L. Yudin), and in the 40's there were theater books (by art. T. Hlibova, L. Harko) and the first transformer-books (by art. N. Ushakova, designer Yu.Buhelsky), on the contrary, it was only in the 30's when the Ukrainian children received paper masks and paper constructors, for emaple: the paper graphic editions, like the series of «Cut and paste» (by «Young Bolshevik», 1933 art: V. Ryftin, B. Bilopolsky, S. Kyrylov, designer I. Dmytrenko). Such play books as do-it-yourself book, theater book, and designing book by the domestic producers would only be seen by the children in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The figure book «Sonia in the village» (Moscow, 1916), with a cardboard silhouette of a little girl and a small notebook with pictures, text and theoretical challenges for children, located in the torso of the doll, was a common form of doll-books in 70-80's (published in « Baby »). Large circulation (500,000 copies) and regular re-release of the book ensured its distribution all over the USSR, including the Ukraininan republic. In the independent Ukraine this form of book they began to publish only in the twenty first century (a series of «Dolls» (PE “Yunisoft", “Talent", 2012).

The Soviet Ukrainian children's book of the second half of the twentieth century reflects the socio-political situation of the republic. Post-war repressions and spiritual Yezhov's victimization were

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reflected in its art form, constrained in the tenacious grip of socialist realism. Along with the political thaw in the late 50's and the beginning of the 60's there is a tendency of showing more individual artists' features in the fields of literary and art. For example, among the traditional children's books of teh 50's and 60's with naturalistic illustrations there are a series of tiny booklets for children. Among them stand out the baby-booklets for the folk song «Oh, I'll hire a bear» and for the folk tale «The Glove» (1962) with illustrations by O. Paslavska who gets rid of soviet realistic naturalizm.

In the 60's and 70's of the twentieth century the interest in books grew dramatically. There was an active debate on the stylistic unity of children's books and the need for fruitful cooperation between an illustrator and an expert in art design. B. Valuyenko, a Ukrainian book expert, strongly insisted on involving toy industry specialists into creating new designs for children's books [2, 182]. But in practice, the process of improving the book architecture in the territory of the Soviet Union took place in Moscow alone. The absence of registered patent and copyright works in this field at that period testifies the fact that the artists used the bookish discoveries already known at the time. There were added some design additions (cuttings, trimmings, rotating disks) to the book block. Also, panorama-books and toy-books were published.

In the 70's there finally appear Ukrainian accordion books, panorama-books, toy-books figured with external logging in paperback or hardcover made of thin cardboard. O. Hayevska, H. Hlik-man, N. Kornyeyeva, V. Morozova, and L. Schukina, the artists of the «Rainbow» publishing house, were working on the design of toy-books of this period. The domestic version of panorama-books of the 70's was often represented as a panoramic three plan book spreads that reminded the greeting cards of the «peep-show» of the nineteenth century with three-dimensional tunnel-images of «Mr. Cat» (1975). The quality of the Ukrainian children’s play books printing, unlike Russian, was low. The paper and the thin cardboard were low grade, the inelaborate font and artwork, made in a vague three-color printing, which needed precise combination of colors and images, and contained almost no tonal transitions, resembled the books of the American depression period. Some structural additions to children's play books, like cutting, punching, and tabs, made by the «Rainbow», the leading publishing house in Kyiv, were considered optional, third-rate, impractical and only those that complicated printing process and reduced production rates of the Soviet Five-Year Plan. The runs of the books were also low (30,000 copies). However, the picture books designed by the artists

O. Senchenko M. Prymachenko, V. Holozubova, V. Lehkobyt were printied in high quality.

In the 80's the books with external figure cutting and baby-books are becoming increasingly popular in Soviet Ukraine. To fill the leisure of children the “Rainbow" produces picture-books and coloring books of various themes, games and didactic tasks. They also stared to publish theater-books, craft-booklets with poems and prank books with pattern of paper toys and regulations for their adjusting and coloring. A significant shift in the domestic book art and printing was the release of vane books with a rotating disk and panorama-books with moving elements and pull tabs by this publishing house. Thus, the book “Home Address" (1986) contained a pop design, pull-out insets and educational tasks (by O. Rubina, artist and designer). The quality of books improved, ersatz carton came in use, the cutting became more compound, the format was enlarged to 220x290mm. For the first time in Ukraine some game book series began to appear, including a theater-book in the series of “What to do with paper" (by the designing artist L. Divynska). Toy-

books (panoramas) combined in the “House of Tales" series were released in a special case which gave merit and premium look to the publication. Decorated by the Ukrainian artist Olga Lebed, the panorama books of the latest series have become classics of the genre. In the 80's the books for kids were illustrated by V. Vrublevskyy, V Honcharov, O. Zhyvotkov, I. Zanuda, O. Kasyanenko, E. Kyrych,

O. Lebed, V. Melnychenko, M. Cherkaskay and K. Shtanko who provided fabulous color and recognizable style of each book.

In the 70's and 80's there was a rise in the foreign book art associated with the surge of inventions that were rapidly implemented in production. Patent developments were focused on greater expansion of the communicative and playful possibilities of a book. There were toy-books with various paperless additions like puppet-dolls, finger puppets, pop forms and kits of slot modules, etc. However, among a large number of foreign inventions of three dimensional toy-books at this period there was only one development from Ukrainian inventors [9]. This artwork, in addition to the transformation of the book form into a three-dimensional design, included artistic and practical activities for a child: cutting, gluing, creating illustrative compositions on the folding podium planes of facing pages. Unfortunately, the publishing house “Rainbow" politely refused to publish this book, referring to the lack of technical capacity of printing production.

During the 80's-90's book architecture was improved and gravity within the book was challenged by the well-known leading book illustrators of Western Europe and the United States (R. Sabuda D. Miller, Ya.Penkovski, D. Pelham, etc.). There was created an incredible three-dimensional pop-up book design with rotation elements on pages that start “working" by means of several uplifting mechanisms. “The Adventures ofAlice in Wonderland", the book of1980, graphically demonstrated bold designs by D. R. Dias: a mysteriously popping deck of cards that calmly, contrary to the law of gravity, hanged over the book spread. However, in Ukraine L. Ker-ol's book was numerously published only as a literature art publication. Unfortunately, none of the Ukrainian book artists dared to attempt to implement their own ideas into the architecture of the book which, by its fantastic content prompts original artistic designing solutions. “Alice in Wonderland" (2007) in the “Cube-Puzzles" (“Kubopazly") series by the “Morning" publishing house was a weak attempt of original artistic search. A unique book about the fabulous underwater world called “The Perfect book about the ocean" (1995) with full-color illustrations and pop folding flaps was created by artists V. Kaska and B. E. Benner. Our domestic books of this type would be issued in 2010, by the publishing house “The Pen" in the “The huge world" series. The multimedia “The Art of renovation" book series (1993) by Ron van der Meer with audio cassettes, detachable booklets, folding flaps and three-dimensional popping illustrations was analogous to Ukrainian toy-books with movable elements and audio applications (“The Pen", “Intelligent Child"), which began to be used by children only in 2010-2011.

In the 90's due to the dissolution of the Soviet Union into separate independent states, a toy-book for children suffered crisis and its new settling within a certain country. At this time they continue releasing toy-books that have become traditional. They were picture-books, coloring books, figure-books, theater-books, crafts books, and other. Children's books with blister eyes from Russian publishing houses appeared in the domestic book market being successfully distributed. Since 1997, along with the state publishing house “Rainbow", private publishing firms commenced their working activities: “Educational book — Bogdan" (Ternopil), “Morning" (Kharkov) and “Swallowtail-Ukraine" (Kyiv). In the twenty first century they

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In search of the origins of the Ukrainian game children’s book

have become national leaders in the production of printed materials for learning and development of children.

The twenty first century has started a new stage of development of the national children's toy-books. Understanding the demands of time, based on the achievements of previous years in the industry, as well as the modern digital technologies and materials, the publishers and designers offer game-book designs for children in accordance with the new requirements of early child development. The young Ukrainian publishers such as “Ayles," “Argument Print", “The Pen" “Cachalot", “Credo", “Intelligent Child" and others also participated in the creation of toy-books for children. And, although the quality of domestic books sometimes does not meet international standards, the creativity and potential of young contemporary artists of independent Ukraine, will hopefully lead to the creation of new highly artistic designs of game books for kids.

In summary, we note that the long-term oppression of the Ukrainian culture by the imperial Russia and the Soviet communist regime led to retardation of book art development process and the

course of formation of a children's book. As a result, the domestic toy-book as an edition with its original architecture appeared in Ukraine more than 200 years later than the European toys-books, 50 years later than the Russian ones and the Ukrainian coloring books. At the same time, K. Ushynsky, S. Rusova, T. Lubentets, and B. Grinchenko's progressive pedagogical ideas, M. Taranko, Y. Shkrumeliuk, and I. Tyktor's publishing works, I. Franko's literary work and the book artists O. Sudomora, I. Kysyl, and B. Kryukov's artworks laid the foundation for the emergence of Ukrainian children's toy-book.

Baby-books and picture-books became the fundamental principle in the development of toy-books, which includes all modern gaming book forms of paper and paperless formats with various artistic and designing implementations and subject-toy additions. Coloring books of the 20's and visual sheet editions of the 30'sth of the twentieth century may be considered as forerunners of a group of game-books. The latter involve descriptive operations; the others provide artistic and constructive activities.

References:

1. Butnyk-Siversky B. S. Principles of illustrating children's books. Kiev: Culture, 1929. - 100 p. (ukr).

2. Valuyenko B. V. Book architecture. Kiev: Arts, 1976. - 212 p. (ukr).

3. Gavenko S., Martyniuk M. The qualimetric analysis of children's printing publications of the Ukrainian book market. Bulletin of the Book Chamber, Edition 2, 2011. - P. 1-3. (ukr).

4. Zubaryev O. B., Kyrychenko L. A. (Ed.). Manual for book selection for representation in the «Chronicle of Fine publications». Kiev: The Book Chamber of Ukraine, 2000. (ukr).

5. Michael Taranko's product overheads. Lviv, 1929. Illustrated Catalogue of Ukrainian Pedagogical Society Lviv, 1929. (ukr).

6. Kozak, I. Ukrainian alphabetic tradition of the late nineteenth century: peculiarities of semantic and structural organization of the textbook. Scientific notes of Vinnitsa State Pedagogical University named after M. Kotsyubynskyy. [“Pedagogy" series], Edition 4, 2009. - P. 170-176. (ukr).

7. Cusiy L. Mikhail M. Taranko. The Ukrainian journalism in names: the materials to Encyclopaedia. Lviv: National Academy of Science, Lviv National Libary named after V Stefanik, Edition 9, 2002. - P. 291-296. (ukr).

8. Hoshovsky B. (Ed.). We and our children. Children's Literature. Art. Education. Toronto, New York: The Union of Children Literature Workers named after L. Hlibov, Volume 1, 1965. - 390 p. (ukr).

9. Kasyanenko Karolina M., Taranov N. N., Kasyanenko S. N. Toy-Book [Text]. Patented May, 23, 1989 A. S.1480839 A1 USSR, A63H 33/38., № 4270133. Bul. № 19. (rus).

10. Siropolko S. The history of Education in Ukraine. Kiev: Scientific opinion, 2001. - 912 p. (ukr).

11. Ushinsky K. D. Man as the subject of education [Coll. Works in 11 volumes]. Moscow: Pedagogika, Volume 8, 1950. - 776 p. (rus).

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