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Tell Me A Story Babushka

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Tell Me A Story Babushka

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$7.95

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Paperback
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Overview

When a little girl asks her Baba to tell her a story about a princess and a monster, what she hears is so much more—the true tale of her grandmother’s escape from a prisoner of war camp in Siberia to freedom, all with the help of a secret message hidden in a nesting doll. The perfect happily ever after!

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ISBN-13:	9781478875826
Publisher:	Reycraft Books
Publication date:	10/01/2022
Pages:	24
Product dimensions:	10.00(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	5 - 8 Years

About the Author

Anita Barghigiani was born near Pisa, Italy, on September 24, 1987. After graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence, she took part in many festivals as a scenographer and photographer. In 2010 she attended the Bologna Children’s Book Fair for the first time and fell in love with children’s books! She then decided to study illustration and entertainment design at NEMO Academy of Digital Arts. Since then, she’s worked as an illustrator for publishers and as a painter and decorator for Dolce & Gabbana. She currently lives in Florence, Italy, where she works, plays the guitar, and actively helps animals as a volunteer.

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Editorial Reviews

10/28/2022
Gr 2–5—This Ukrainian story opens with a little girl asking her baba, or grandmother, to tell her a fairy tale, specifically one with "a princess and monsters." Baba then shares a story about a little girl whose family was taken and separated by the Soviet army and then imprisoned in a camp in Siberia. In the children's room there, it is discovered that matryoshka dolls are hidden beneath their mattresses. Within these nesting dolls is a written rescue plan to be followed at dawn. "What came next for the little girl? Where was she going?" the granddaughter asks, to which Baba replies "What would come, she had no idea. Maybe in the new place there would be no gunshots and hunger." It is later revealed, of course, that the little girl in the story was Baba, and that she is now able to spend time with her granddaughter as "a happy old lady." Baba's words are accompanied by exquisitely detailed illustrations. What stands out most is the depiction of the "monsters" as the Soviet army invades Ukraine. The faces and bodies are sharp, rigid, and menacing shapes with dark hues of brown and blue to help readers understand the horror that occurred for Ukrainians during the early 20th century. A beautiful, but heartbreaking, tale of survival told through the eyes of a grandmother who endured what became known as the Holodomor, this story belongs in elementary collections, but may be too dark for early primary students. VERDICT This is a timely lesson that exemplifies how often, miserably, history repeats itself.—Kerra Mazzariello

School Library Journal

2022-07-27
A child learns of her Ukrainian grandmother’s terrifying escape as a child.
Baba kneads dough for bread and tells her granddaughter, Karina, light-skinned and brown-haired, the story of a little girl living in a Ukrainian village. The soldiers of the Soviet army, portrayed as monsters, invade, first taking the villagers’ grain (a note at the beginning describes Holodomor, a famine caused by the Soviet Communist Party that resulted in 14.5 million deaths), then imprisoning families, including the little girl’s, in a camp in Siberia, where children are separated from their parents. One day the children discover matryoshka dolls beneath their mattresses; the fifth dolls contain messages of a rescue plan. At dawn, while their captors are at a campwide meeting, the children are ushered away through the forest, then onto a waiting train. Baba reveals that she was the little girl—and is now “a happy old lady, kneading bread dough and telling a true story to her granddaughter.” Beautiful, detailed illustrations bring to life an old-world village with a thatched roof cottage. As the invasion approaches, dark, foreboding scenes dominate with frightening depictions of soldiers with sharp-angled faces in silhouette, holding spearlike rifles. The matryoshka dolls are colorfully limned, a bright source in the darkness. This is an ugly historical moment of destruction told expeditiously, concluding with a decisive and constructive outcome for an earlier generation of Ukrainian children. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Timely, with relevance to today’s difficult Ukrainian struggle as history is repeated. (Historical picture book. 6-9)

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