"Magpie's Tales" have their own unique author's, "Tolstovian" style. They cannot be confused with Russian or other folk tales. To write them, Tolstoy spent several years studying fairy tales, myths, songs, and reading research by folklorists.
The bird and animal kingdom of fairy tales is inhabited by funny, mysterious, sometimes scary and stupid, but always incredibly attractive heroes: a magpie that has become mangy from greed; a fox who dreams of thieves; the cat Vaska, who was left without a tail, but with teeth; the sage rooster, who even on the way to the soup continued to wonder whether it would rain; a pig artist who decided to paint a landscape. Included in this motley group of heroes are kitchen utensils that chatter all night long, as well as toys that are frightened by the scary picture under the chest of drawers, and even... porticoes, rotten, but proud and touchy.
Alexey Tolstoy wrote "Magpie's Tales" more than a century ago, when he was only 24 years old. Since then, fairy tales have been repeatedly illustrated, but masterpieces have not been born until... Until the artist Evgenia Lotsmanova, the favorite student of the famous illustrator Boris Didorov, took on them. A fragile, incredibly talented girl, working in the extremely labor-intensive technique of color lithography, created magnificent, lacy, ocher-blue, magical pictures that miraculously coincide with the writer’s vision of a fairy-tale world. That's why the book is included in the "An Artist Draws a Fairy Tale" series.
"Magpie's Tales" is quite complex and is intended for experienced readers, not children. The book will appeal to children who have already begun to read for themselves, as well as to adults who admire the brilliant text and beautiful illustrations.
Author: Alexey Tolstoy
Illustrations: Evgenia Lotsmanova
Pages: 136 (offset). Hardcover
Dimensions: 280x218x20 mm
