
Renowned Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) had an abiding interest in children and children's literature. He started a school for peasant children on his family's estate, and later founded another, experimental school with the motto, "Come when you like, leave when you like." Fascinated by the simple charm and fresh innocence with which the children of his schools told stories, Tolstoy began writing about his own childhood, emulating the uncomplicated narrative style and disarming directness of the tales told by the children of his acquaintance. After completing WAR AND PEACE, he incorporated these stories in a series of easy readers. Known as THE ABC BOOK (Azbuka) and THE NEW ABC BOOK (Novaia Azbuka), these marvelous readers were widely adopted in Russia and were still in use in the Soviet era. The tales and fables in this charmingly illustrated volume come mainly from these two well-loved primers. Part 1 consists of stories about Tolstoy's own childhood, all told with beautiful simplicity. Part 2 contains Tolstoy's free adaptations of fables from Aesop and from Hindu tradition. Part 3 is devoted solely to his longest and most famous children's work, the fairy tale "Ivan the Fool and His Two Brothers." Never patronizing and often humorous, these small gems reveal Tolstoy's deep appreciation for and understanding of children's artistic and moral sensibilities.
Author

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой; most appropriately used Liev Tolstoy; commonly Leo Tolstoy in Anglophone countries) was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist fiction. Many consider Tolstoy to have been one of the world's greatest novelists. Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer. His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.