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Overview
This heart-warming Ukrainian folktale, set during the Great Famine of the 1930s, tells of a young girl's attempts to save her village from starvation.
When soldiers take the village's wheat, Marusia hides just enough to survive. She and her father share with the other villagers over the winter, then plant the few remaining grains in the spring. A gigantic stalk of magical wheat grows attracting the attention of an equally large and magical stork. The stork flies with Marusia on a magical journey to the prairies, where farmers give Marusia enough wheat for her village.
Word of the magical journey reaches a greedy officer, who tricks the stork into retracing the magical journey. But the officer does not understand the meaning of "enough" and his greed leads to his doom. Back in the village, Marusia and her father know they must devise a clever plan to protect their wheat from other greedy soldiers . . . and perhaps from the dictator himself!
Led by a clever girl, the villagers of Zhitya manage to save their wheat harvest from the greedy Dictator.
Synopsis
This heart-warming Ukrainian folktale, set during the Great Famine of the 1930s, tells of a young girl's attempts to save her village from starvation.
When soldiers take the village's wheat, Marusia hides just enough to survive. She and her father share with the other villagers over the winter, then plant the few remaining grains in the spring. A gigantic stalk of magical wheat grows attracting the attention of an equally large and magical stork. The stork flies with Marusia on a magical journey to the prairies, where farmers give Marusia enough wheat for her village.
Word of the magical journey reaches a greedy officer, who tricks the stork into retracing the magical journey. But the officer does not understand the meaning of "enough" and his greed leads to his doom. Back in the village, Marusia and her father know they must devise a clever plan to protect their wheat from other greedy soldiers . . . and perhaps from the dictator himself!
Publishers Weekly
This wordy fairy tale by the creators of Silver Threads is rooted in history; according to an introductory note, the setting is "during the Famine instigated by Stalin in 1930's Ukraine." But the volume suffers from the tall-tale quality of the narrative and the exaggerated characterizations. After one of "the Dictator's soldiers" appears on the farm where Marusia lives with her father, he announces, "Your wheat and your farm now belong to the People." He and his compatriots confiscate the crops of every farmer in the village. But Marusia hides one sack of grain that keeps them all alive during the hard winter, and plants seeds from which a magic stalk grows, attracting a large stork. The bird carries her on its back to a land of plenty so she can restock her village's supplies. In a predictable turn of events, another of the Dictator's soldiers makes a similar journey on the stork's back, but hordes so much grain that he and his sacks tumble off into the ocean. Unfortunately, the prose is often overblown when coupled with the oafish characters depicted (e.g., it is "the Dictator's wish that this land be filled with graves"). The villains--and even the victimized Ukrainians--appear as caricatures in the artwork, which does little to vitalize this heavy-handed narrative. Ages 6-8. (Apr.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.