My Piece of Lake

The earth, sand, pebbles at the bottom, Elodea, ampullaria, scalaris, barb - it sounds like a recipe for a magical potion. Follow it, and you will have your own little piece of living nature at home.

This is how it happened with Styopa, who dreamed of having an aquarium. His father helps him: together they choose an aquarium, go to the lake to collect soil, rinse and boil it on the stove, plant the plants, add snails, choose fish, and make a house for the catfish from a coconut. And here it is, a small piece of the lake, the scent of which carries warm memories of summer.

Nadezhda Chubarova is the author of children's books, a semifinalist of the V.P. Krapivin literary awards and the "Big Children's Book". Aquarium fish are her love.

The colorful underwater world is created by the illustrations of Svetlana Lyadova. The deliberate approach, combining color and black-and-white images, embodies the idea of a bright world of children's fantasies.