The Bead of the Pocket Dwarf

Meet Lille—a необычний dog, Vera and Varya—unusual sisters, and Birdie—an unusual bird (though with a simple name). Lille is long-long—stretching across the whole street. Vera and Varya look at each other no more alike than a polar day looks like a polar night—and besides, they talk to animals. Birdie is learned and pre-learned, white and round, just like a snowball shouting clever words.

Snowball-like events will unfold when the news comes that Varya has gotten sick, and then Birdie will have to shout not clever words, but alarming ones. Vera is sure it’s all because of a bead that the sisters stole from a bearded dwarf—the terrible and fierce one embroidered on Varya’s dress. What could help the girl? A book written by a famous storyteller from Finland! Put it under the pillow—and the sister will feel better! Vera, Lille, and Birdie must reach that storyteller, or Finland, or anywhere to the north—just to save Varya…

A new book by Anastasia Strokina is as unusual as its heroes, and as dynamic as her debut novella “The Whale Is Swimming North.” The latter made the author a diploma holder of the V. Krapivin prize and got her into the shortlist of the “Kniguru” prize. In 2017, CompassGuid released her translation of Emmanuel Mezzonneuve’s book “The Moon Tom and the Secret Society of Greatness.”

Anastasia Strokina is charmed by the North, and this time the magical world she created comes alive on the streets and in stairwells of Saint Petersburg, in Finland, by the coastal rocks of Iceland and Greenland—and, most importantly, in the hearts of readers of both younger school age and adults. “The Bead of a Pocket Dwarf,” for all its abundance of adventures and ceaseless motion, is a story about learning about oneself. The illustrations by Oleg Braude reflect both the book’s adventurous spirit and its unique atmosphere—cold, yet somehow fairy-tale-like.