News
19/12/2023. Foreign/Own: new Christmas stories
December 19, 2023:
The program of the Foreign/Own project was dedicated to new Christmas stories by domestic and foreign authors.
The regular participants of the project are already familiar with the genre of the Christmas story, its history and specifics from previous years’ programs. This time they learned about new and “well forgotten” works; traced how the image of the spruce, the Christmas symbol of the eternal life, is presented differently in The Tale of Two Christmas Trees (Rus. Сказка о двух елках) written by Anna Salnikova in the 19th century and in the book The Little Fir Tree by American children’s writer Margaret Wise Brown, written in the mid-twentieth century. Another common Christmas motif - the motif of loss and gain - was observed by the participants in the stories by Russian authors Violetta Minina and Olga Fadeeva, German writer and artist Walko, and Swedish writer Ulf Stark.
For preliminary reading and discussion at the program, participants were offered two Christmas-themed works: One Christmas Wish by British writer Katherine Rundell, and The Winter Master (Rus. Зимний мастер) by Russian writer Nina Dashevskaya. The participants chose a fragment of the last work for translation into Karelian. After reading the book, the members of the meeting discussed their own Christmas-related associations, memories and the magical power of creativity and the joyful Christmas time.
Works on Christmas themes by domestic and foreign authors are presented in the electronic catalogue and are waiting for readers of the National Library of Karelia.
