About children's books and not only

What books did you read as a child?

Which ones made you love reading?

From what stories did the heart stop, and the head was spinning from the adventures told, and exactly experienced together with the heroes?

Oh, we are sure that everyone has such a secret list - a favorite, the best, such that it responds pleasantly in memories for many, many years.

We have one too. And quite a lot - Eirik Godvirdson in all his guises was a very bookish child, it's true.

And, of course, adventure and detective books played a very noticeable role in his-our-literary predilections.

Some of them were books, so to speak, classic, some belonged to the genre of purely children's literature - oh, what was called a "children's detective story", for example, we both read so much!!! For example, the part of Eirik Godvirdson that writes these lines read Blyton, Campbell, Hitchcock in such wild quantities as the library and the book stall in the market could provide at all (alas, the second is directly dependent on finances, but sometimes-a-a-a managed to make such a raid, and they knew would you, what happiness it was!). Bookcases were also used by family friends, then I became a little more skilled in the art of interpersonal communication and learned even from those with whom I was not friends to beg for books "to read" in exchange for something else, valuable in the children's environment, different every time. In general, reading was a passion in childhood, and it remained in mature years. And then something interesting happened. In these most mature years, I suddenly wanted to reread something from that most cherished childhood: adventures, detectives, mysterious stories, that's all. For the sake of nostalgia and for the sake of the desire to adjust the optics to all kinds of literature as such. After all, children's literature is a complex genre, and very specific.

Of course, the choice fell on the most memorable stories: Mayne Reed, Fenimore Cooper, Stevenson...

oh my God. It was....informative.

Sometimes I think - maybe it wasn't worth it?)

Because a miracle didn't happen... Almost.

Stevenson's Treasure Island, for example, has remained a wonderful book. It was read as quickly, easily and interestingly, and brought the same amount of pleasure as in childhood, and here I am pleasantly surprised, to be honest.

But a funny thing happened to Cooper. And with most of all the other books, too.

Mayne Reed and Zane Grey were a little better, yes.

But I was a little afraid to open Blyton, Capmbell and Bulychev, to be honest.

I sincerely did not understand how, HOW I found this very thing in all this in my childhood - a sparkling, burning, like a gem, treasure.

Books about exciting adventures on closer inspection turned out to be something strange. In Cooper, for example, I could not break through the veil of the murky stream of consciousness and the endless verbiage of some characters who reliably bury a really interesting plot; and children's detectives sometimes unbearably simplify, exaggerate characters and events, serve the exposition banal "words in the forehead" instead of the actual description as part of the adventure, and thereby they trivialize, or something, the very approach to narrative as an art. Not all books from childhood are guilty of this. Not all of them, let's be honest. However, against the background of all these studies, we had an idea.

And that's what it is, gentlemen readers and colleagues.

Why not try to write a book that children and teenagers can read in their 10-11-12 years, experiencing adventures and traveling together with their peers? And at the same time, one that will remain both interesting and exciting later, when these same children and teenagers, becoming older, decide, like us, to remember their favorite books, reread them?

Such that you can read and discuss with the whole family, like a good adventure movie!

Such a book that will introduce the worlds of our authorship at almost any age?

Something like the same Main Reed, only taking into account all our own wishes?

Something that, like Treasure Island, will remain as bright when re-reading, and will not fade after years, eh?

Eirik Godvirdson's books, which can actually be read from school years - hmm, why not? After all, when to read about prairies and treasures, if not when you are an eleven-year-old schoolboy languishing from boredom? Yes, about treasures! or about dragons and endless forests? About the sea, pearls, pirates, fabulous rainbows over the bays? Or insidious witches, magical birds and forest secrets, finally?

In general, having thought so, we decided to take it and do it.

An ideal children's (not genre children's, in fact, of course, but quite suitable for children's reading) book.

Which can remain not only a good memory, but also a book on the shelf and an adult reader.

Let's start with the adventures, gentlemen.

Or even not so - the adventures begin. For our heroes - the boys from the town of Red Creek, for us, the authors of this story, and very soon - for you, those who will read it. Or will he let his younger relatives read it, why not?

Adventures and detective riddles - and, of course, friendship, ingenuity, bravery, mutual assistance; and also the wind behind your back, a faithful dog, horse racing, scary stories around the campfire and fishing on the river in the sultry afternoon. And, of course, mysterious incidents. Which are not so easy to understand, even if you have been an adult for a long time! But our heroes will succeed, right? Let's believe in them, gentlemen)

And a small book under the working title "The Secret of the Straw Ravine" is already in the works, and now we are smoothly approaching the completion of its first third, and this is the main news today. The book will be illustrated by the author, and this is the second news, no less important.

That's it for today, see you soon... and yes, we have not abandoned the essays on craft-and-art, we will certainly continue to write them and post them for you in the future.

See you soon, gentlemen!