Kostya Zhikharev's Heroic Adventures

Once, in a town called Kysloretske, standing on the Kyslytsia River, there lived a boy. His name was Kostya Zhikharev.

He was a good boy. He never fought—doctors forbade it. It got boring, for the traumatologists, to keep treating Kostya’s buddies…

But Kostya had one flaw: he was unbearably obedient. If the guys in the yard said, “Kostyan, can you flip this blue Volvo?”—he would flip it, because it wasn’t a problem. Because of this lack of character in the young hero, only troubles fell on Kostya’s parents.

So they decided to send him to the summer holidays in the village of Maliye Ulyoty to his great-great-grandmother, Patrikee Markidonivna…

If the caring parents had known what would come of it! But how would any normal father and mother think that their child might set off one day into a place where they’re not—where Gingerbread Men, two-headed owls, and mighty heroes are found…