description: This might have the dubious qualification of being the first book I ever read by myself. In Bengali translation.It is one of many Russian (this one is Ukrainian) folk tales that the author had compiled in the 19th century.The story is delightful.A little boy goes to collect mushrooms in the Siberian forest one winter with his grandfather. Grandfather loses one of his mittens.A mouse finds the mitten and decides to make a home in it. Soon out of the cold snow comes a rooster, looking for a bit of warmth, so the mouse takes him in. Then would come a variety of animals of increasing sizes, cozying up inside the mitten. A chimney spouts; they cook and sing heartily, more animals come inside for shelter, and they are all taken in, finally a bear also snuggles in, and the mitten starts to burst at the seam...then there is the bark of a dog out of the forest, and grandfather comes to retrieve his mitten with the little boy. The animals scurry away.Can the little boy ever imagine what was happening inside?I had read it perhaps when I was only four years old, some 48 years ago, and I can still recite a few of those lines in Bengali.I wouldn't like to lose these lines even when Alzheimer's finally catches up with me.In those days books printed in the west were usually too expensive for lower middle class Indians, and we children didn't read English any way. One real virtue of the Soviet Union was to make available translations of Russian books (in English as well as in a number of Indian Languages), with beautiful bindings and gorgeous pictures to citizens of the third world nations. Of course it was part of the cold war...but if this was the result of the cold war then may we have another cold war please (minus the bomb). In addition to this particular gem, I am greatly indebted to two others: Alexei Tolstoi's Nikita's Childhood (reviewed separately), and Glinka's General Chemistry. This latter book helped ignite my interest in science back when I was in the ninth grade.][Bulgaria had issued a postage stamp on this story in the 1960s. I had the stamp in my collection, but it got burnt in 1967. Alas, Peace Publishers is no more!]
title: Grandfather's Mitten
titlecomplete: Grandfather's Mitten
ratings_count: 1
publisher: Peace Publishers, Moscow