Fairytales & the Five-Year Plan

Special Collections at the University of Washington has a new collection of rare Russian children’s books, collected by the late Pamela Harer and donated to the University of Washington by her family. The books in this exhibition should be of interest not just to specialists in children’s literature, but also to artists, art historians, librarians, scholars of Slavic studies, and members of the general public seeking to learn more about either the history of children’s books or early twentieth-century artistic culture in Russia. The unique books in this collection are not only for children but are also works of art in themselves.

The aim of this project has to been digitize and contextualize a portion of the Harer Collection, so that members of the public all over the world will not only have access to these works, but will also gain a better understanding of their historical framework. Essays about the authors, illustrators, publishers, and artistic movements of the era are provided in order to guide visitors through the history of Russian children’s book illustration, and to place it in the broader context of children’s literature and art historical movements both in Russia and the West.

This digital exhibit has two components:

— A series of essays about historical and artistic topics, which introduce viewers to the illustrated children's book in both Russia and the West, and place the Russian books in a broader context.

— A searchable database of fully digitized books at the University of Washington Libraries, which allow viewers to see high quality scans of every page of each book.

All images in this exhibit are from the Pamela K. Harer Collection of Russian Children's Books, within the Historical Children’s Literature Collection at Special Collections, University of Washington Libraries, unless otherwise noted in the caption. Selection, scanning, research, essays, and descriptive metadata for the exhibit were done by Kirsten Painter from 2016 to 2019.

Go to the First Essay: Introduction: Word & Image in the Illustrated Children's Book in Russia & the West

Read all the Interpretive Essays about the books

Watch a one-minute video about this project

Browse all Books from the Harer Collection digitized for this exhibit

Read about the History of this Project and Acknowledgments