Happy Pride!
People—and by that we mean corporations—often start Pride off strong and end with a whimper. But we recognize that while Pride is about pride, it’s also about resistance. And resistance is a very, very long-form game.
Today’s episode looks at four picture book iterations of a classic Russian folktale, The Gigantic Turnip: One from the USSR; one from modern Russia; one from Britain in the 90s; and one from the US a few years back. How do these various versions of the story change its meaning? Does the central core of the story itself contain its own meaning that resists translation and adaptation? Most importantly this month, how does literature’s ability to be interpreted, to gain meaning from the very act of reading, consternate the job of government censors?
It’s the episode where we modestly propose that if you want to ban books, you might as well ban them all!
Show Notes
We looked at four different texts this week, all versions of the Russian folktale The Gigantic Turnip. This was first published by Alexander Afanasyev, in anthology of similarly collected stories called Russian Folktales. For ease of reference, we labeled these by their place of publication. Find more information, and select photos of these editions, below. The American Library Association statistics I quote in the show are available here and here.
The Soviet Edition
A Russian Folktale: The Turnip. As told by Aleksei Tolstoy and illustrated by Veniamin Losin. Translated by Fainna Glagoleva. Printed by Malysh Press in the USSR, n.d. (Internet suggests it’s late 80s). Fully available on the Internet Archive!
The British Edition
The Gigantic Turnip. Credited to Aleksei Tolstoy with illustrations to Niamh Sharkey. Text copyrighted to Stella Blackstone. Oxford, UK: Barefoot Books, 1998. Fully available on the Internet Archive! (Must be logged in to borrow).
The US Edition
Grandma Lena’s Big Ol’ Turnip. Text by Denia Lewis Hester. Illustrations by Jackie Urbanovic. Chicago: Albert Whitman & Company, 2005. Fully available on the Internet Archive! (Must be logged in to borrow).
The Russian Edition
Репка. No author attributed. Illustrations by Evgeniĭ Antonenkov. Moscow: Publishing House NIGMA, 2016. Fully available on the Internet Archive! (Must be logged in to borrow).