New generation of writers and trenchant critics

The regional competition for the best personal response to a contemporary prose work for children, held for the first time this year, will become an annual event, as announced by its organizers and initiators — the Hrani-T Publishing House, the Ministry of Education and Science, the Ministry of Culture, and the State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting. The competition was launched on September 1, and the submission deadline was set on October 31.

Last Monday, the organizers tallied up the total figures of the Kyiv round of the competition — over 4,000 pupils of the fourth and fifth grades from over 200 Kyiv schools participated. In order to support the literary ambitions of the schoolchildren, Hrani-T has organized for them over 50 meetings with contemporary children’s writers in all oblasts of Ukraine.

Children’s writer Maryna PAVLENKO has talked to schoolchildren in Kherson, Chernihiv, and Donetsk. She says that she has received “many pleasant impressions.”

“I have to admit that I was alarmed, because I had not been to Donetsk before. But I received absolutely positive impressions. The lecture hall was crammed, and I was surrounded by kind eyes and smiles. Later the audience stood in a line to receive autographs and books. Good books unite all of us. In reality there is no polarity; everything is artificially imposed,” says Maryna with conviction.

Incidentally, the winner of the Kyiv round of the competition submitted a response to Pavlenko’s books Domovychok iz palitroiu (A Brownie with a Palette) and Domovychok povertaietsia (The Brownie Comes Back). It was written by Vladyslava Hrechkosii, a fourth-grader from Hraal School No. 43. She and her teacher Liudmyla Kmet received the main prizes – laptops. A total of 54 laptops will be given to the winners and their teachers in all regions of Ukraine. Sevastopol is next in the line after the capital, then comes Uzhhorod, and so on.

The second place went to the pupil of Romance-Germanic Gymnasium No. 123 Olena Kovalchuk, who wrote about Olha Busenko’s Paperovy anhel (Paper Angel). She says that, above all, the book caught her attention with interesting images. Her teacher, Oksana Mostova, says that the situation with children’s reading has undergone considerable changes lately.

“Everything starts with the book’s design. Like children, parents are attracted by covers and books that make you want to take them in your hands and leaf through. Children are reading more eagerly today and change as a result. They become more tactful, more educated, and cultured, and acquire good manners.”

These changes are indeed noticeable. Children looked with awe at the litterateurs, Lesia Voronyna, Yana Dubynianska, Ivan Andrusiak, Valerii and Natalia Lapikur, who gave them letters of commendation and presents, and were gratified to have an opportunity to get acquainted with a “living writer,” not only with phantoms of classics from the pages of school books.

“When I received a proposal to meet with children, I was very nervous,” Dubynianska said. “I know what to expect from adult audiences, but I know nothing about children’s reactions. I thought they would come in whole classes, sit down and listen in an official atmosphere, with children looking out of the windows, bored. But it turned out that a writer’s visit was a noteworthy event for them. They asked me many questions, so much so I hardly managed to give answers. Then I thought: everything is going to be all right now, for sure.”

There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that there is a direct relation between the amount of books children read and the kind of country we will have in the future. Besides, the literary process still needs an injection of young blood. I am speaking not only about writers, but also competent and trenchant literary critics.

The new round of the regional competition will be held in May 2010.