A Gift for the Ghost. A New Year's Tale

Books about ghosts are eagerly read at any time of the year. Especially on long winter evenings, when everyone is waiting for magic and transformations. 

The tale of the New Year's adventures of a girl named Alina captivates the spirit and... keeps the intrigue until the last lines. There is an old castle, a fearless little girl, a real miracle, and of course, ghosts. And in Elena Yaryshovskaya's book, there is a whole company of ghosts. They all huddle in a small basement, afraid of attracting human attention. But the girl Alina becomes an unwitting witness to the secret life of the castle. What will happen now? What are the ghosts willing to do to keep their peace?.. 

The tale is illustrated by contemporary artist Sergey Gavrilov. His irony and play amaze and amuse on every page. 

Elena Nikolaevna Yaryshovskaya is a children's writer, poet, and teacher. She was born in 1972 in the Omsk region. In 1985, she moved to Moscow with her family, where she graduated from the Moscow State Pedagogical University named after Lenin. She worked as a primary school teacher. In 2012, she joined the Union of Writers of Moscow. She is an author of poetry and prose for children. Her poems have appeared in magazines such as "Murzik", "Cucumber", "Chizh and Yezh", "Library in School", "Chitaika", "Yellow Caterpillar", "Vezdepryg", "Fountain" (Odessa), and others. She loves to read, draw, travel, and most of all—create different stories. 

Mikhail Yasnov wrote about Yaryshovskaya's work in his book "Journey into Childhood": "Elena Yaryshovskaya, despite her still relatively short experience in writing children's poetry, already presents herself as a poet who is both talented and seasoned, and writes abundantly. And most importantly—she is a great imaginer... Each of her miniatures is a little story, in which some invented lovely characters participate, sometimes natural phenomena, sometimes heroes from the child's close world.”