Multicolored Snow

Here’s how life is: from one random meeting, a whole story emerged, reminiscent of a detective tale! 13-year-old Stasya ran into Yakov Semyonovich, the new librarian, who invited her to a literary club. Of course, Stasya brought along Romka — a good friend whose family has faced tragedy — to take his mind off things.

“Draw snow on one sheet and night on another,” was the strange assignment Yakov Semyonovich gave during an anxious session. And lo and behold, everyone handled it differently! There were other surprising assignments as well — for instance, digging into the history of Anton Petrovich Starcev. He is the very traitor whom they remember in Ozhsk from the war. It would seem that everything about Starcev is long known, but the librarian Yakov Semyonovich managed to resonate with the teenagers and pose the key question correctly: “Is Starcev really a traitor?” — and the thirst for justice truly animated the kids. Stasya and her friends discover missing puzzle pieces — the details for which it is worth sneaking into the principal's office... As they move toward unraveling the main intrigue, the reader, like the characters in the story, tries on the fates of many people. The past turns out to be more complicated than it seemed, and the present too. “Multicolored Snow” is a captivating and yet subtle work that requires pauses for reflection. Natalia Volkova's novella made it to the final list of the V. P. Krapivin Prize — 2017 and received a special prize from Yekaterinburg libraries.

Natalia Volkova (born in 1977) has dozens of popular books for children and teenagers to her credit, numerous awards and victories in competitions (including those named after A. Tolstoy, P. Yershov, K. Vasilyev, S. Mikhalkov, and others). She creates not only fiction and poetry but also non-fiction: her encyclopedias are read by students all over Russia. Her ability to transform a vast collection of facts into an engaging narrative also helps the writer in the novella “Multicolored Snow”: the book is so engrossing that it's hard to put down and invites a closer look at historical events.