Stories About Animals: The Fawn, The Foundling, Bogach and Yeremka

Russian writer Dmitry Narkisovich Mamin-Sibiryak was born in 1852. The writer’s real surname was Mamin. He was born in the Urals, in the factory settlement of Visim-Shaitansky, into the family of a poor factory priest and a village schoolteacher.

His parents taught the boy to love books; he avidly read Pushkin and Gogol, Turgenev and Nekrasov. The family subscribed for the children (there were four of them) to the magazine “Children’s World.”

The boy showed a love of literature early on. From the age of 16, he kept a diary in which he wrote down his thoughts and observations about life in the Urals. Dmitry Narkisovich traveled a great deal across Siberia, studying the history, economy of his native land, and wildlife. This is how the writer’s pen name appeared, later becoming the second part of his surname — Sibiryak.

In 1890, Mamin-Sibiryak moved to St. Petersburg, where he lived until the end of his life. A year later his wife died, leaving the writer with his sick daughter Alyonushka.

D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak devoted all his later творчество to his beloved daughter. His “Children’s Shadows,” “Alyonushka’s Tales,” and “Gray Neck” have been read and loved by children for many years. Animals, birds, fish, insects, and plants live and speak there. D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak’s stories about animals: “The Foundling,” “Winter Quarters on the Studyonaya,” “Little Bear,” and others, are poignant, full of tenderness and love for those who depend on humans

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