A delightful book for young and old, especially those learning Russian
This little volume makes a fine gift, and has much to recommend it for diverse audiences. The playful, humorous verse translation by Lydia Razran Stone makes it especially good to read to children, who would likely not appreciate a literal prose rendition. The same is true for many adults, even though a prose version might be closer to the imagery and vocabulary of the original Russian. The bilingual character of the book--Russian on one side and English on the other--is excellent, indeed indispensable, for anyone who knows or is studying Russian. While the remark attributed to Robert Frost, that poetry is what is lost in translation, is surely an exaggeration, there is no doubt that reading the work in the original language is a huge plus.The illustrations by Russian artist Katya Korobkina are truly delightful. The characters (animals and animate objects) are relocated to a 21st-Century Russian town, usually with human bodies and animal heads. This adds a brilliant dimension of liveliness and timeliness to the text.For comparison, I looked at what else was available on Amazon.com, and found a recent edition by David Karpman, which has only an English verse translation (no Russian). From the excerpts accessible through Amazon, I am doubtful that the translator is a native speaker of English. Sometimes it even seems to be the work of Google Translate. Karpman notes here and there that he has omitted the moral part--by which he means the ironic couplet at the end of a fable, which is integral to the author's idea! (Older translations at Amazon.com did not offer sample pages for review; nor does The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar.)
