Today’s post is from Kelsey Hedrick. See her earlier #WorldKidLit Month post about Russian here.

Let’s start as well with a song from the 2022 Eurovision Contest – The Kalush Orchestra singing a techno folk song that celebrated Ukrainian culture and gave strength to the people fighting in the war.  

Anya and the Dragon (2019), written by Sofiya Pasternack. Lots of the books can fit in more than one category, because the Soviet and Russian empires were both very large.  This tale isn’t clearly in one place, but does talk about the history of the Kievan Rus in addition to dragons.  The Kievan Rus Empire spanned both the Ukraine and Russia, but Kiev was it’s center, which is now part of Ukraine.  

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The Blackbird Girls (2020), written by Anne Blankman. This book is centered around the tragedy of Chernobyl, with the focus on two young girls whose fathers both work at the nuclear facility. Their journey brings them together throughout the course of the story, despite them being fierce enemies at the beginning. Chernobyl during the disaster was part of the Soviet Union, but is now part of the Ukraine.  I’ll be honest and say that this wasn’t my favorite book, but it was a decent story and one that I was surprised to see out. The Blackbird Girls has also been translated into Italian (translated by Rubina Ronci) and Czech (translated by Tereza Schlöglová).

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The Lost Year (2023) by Katherine Marsh. This book is glorious.  The Lost Year talks about the author’s own family history of the Holodomor – a great famine that devastated Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s.  This is juxtaposed with the covid pandemic, with the young narrator discovering a collection of letters that led him into her story. The Lost Year has also been translated into Czech (translated by Barbora Punge Puchalská) and Polish (translated by Anna Klingofer-Szostakowska and Sara Manasterska).

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Yellow Butterfly: a Story from Ukraine (2023), written and illustrated by Oleksandr Shatokhin. This book is a wordless picture book about the pride of Ukraine and the symbolism that the yellow and blue holds.  There is hope and terror mixed together. It has been published in Lithuania and France,

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Last Witnesses (Adapted for Young Adults in 2021), written by Svetlana Alexievich. Originally published in Russian in 1985, Last Witnesses was translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. It is a modern classic. Alexievich won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015, and is one of the premier researchers of Russian and Soviet history today, and she was born in Ukraine. This book is a non-fiction oral history of WWII, focusing on the memories of those who were children during the war. One of the biggest celebrations of the year is the remembrance of those lost in WWII and the pride of the war.  

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In the Shadow of the Moon: America, Russia, and the Hidden History of the Space Race (2021), written by Amy Cherrix. This books talks about the space race and the engineers who were behind the missions on both sides.  Having visited some of the famous sites, Korolev is one of the notable people that is mentioned. He’s from what is now Ukraine and also spent time in a gulag, which is part of the book’s narrative. There are also some interesting pieces of history about the Soviet Union in this book. 

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The Great Nijinsky: God of Dance (2019), written by Lynn Curlee. Nijinsky was one of the premier male ballerinas in the early Soviet Union and part of the Ballet Russes – a novel touring group that experimented with new ideas and changed the culture and popularity of dance.  He was a gay icon, the first superstar, and a tragic figure. He was born in Kiev during the Russian Empire, which became the Soviet Union, and what is now Ukraine.  

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Kelsey Hedrick is a librarian at Jakarta Intercultural School in Indonesia. She has lived and worked in Cambodia, Thailand, and Russia as well.