Childhood. Here is my village...

An excerpt from the poem by Ivan Surikov (1841—1880) is familiar to everyone from school years. Surprisingly, this familiarity played a cruel trick on the work: the first stanzas began to be perceived as an independent piece about a funny incident with a village boy — rolling down a hill and tumbling into the snow for the amusement of his friends.
But Surikov's poem is much deeper and subtler. It is about the pure and joyful world of childhood. It is about the almost lost world of the Russian village. It is about a world of fairy tales, a joyful and free childhood dream.
All these worlds are lovingly and inspiringly revealed to the young reader in the illustrations by the remarkable St. Petersburg artist Mikhail Bychkov.