The Garden Named T. S.

How sometimes you crave home! And home is right there—just a couple blocks away. Sveta and her three brothers—Gleb, Vaska, and little Sasha—run there with pleasure. Because at home there’s a favorite old house (with an attic!), dusty unnecessary things, an overgrown wild garden. And not just a garden—an at-t. s. garden!

But wait—right now the garden has no name! First, the whole big family will move into a new apartment—in a huge multi-story house. Then, in a heavy box of photographs, they’ll find a picture of Trofim Savosykin—the nineteen-year-old great-grandfather posing in the streets of Berlin in May 1945. Vaska will fall in love with the brave old hero from afar and will tell everyone about him.

And then Sveta and the three boys will face a big test—they’ll have to defend the Motherland!

Can the past influence us? To the surprise of the characters in the story, it absolutely can: thanks to a great-grandfather whose feat almost didn’t become history, the family’s life will suddenly and irrevocably change—for the better.

Maria Boteva (born 1980) is the author of books “Ice Cream in Waffle Cups,” “You Walk on a Carpet,” and “The Lighthouse—Look!”—already published in “KompasGid.” Her prose is for those who love to immerse themselves in the text, read and reread it in a loop, discovering new details and enjoying the beauty of each line. The writer always manages to give readers food for thought and discussion: no wonder her collection “Ice Cream in Waffle Cups” made it into the list “White Ravens” of the Munich International Youth Library as a particularly significant and relevant work. The novella “The Garden Named after at-t. s.”, aimed at middle school readers, is a book as timely as it is timeless: it’s the kind of classic that is born right before our eyes.