Another History of the Children's Picture Book ─ From Soviet Lithuania to India

This book calls for a re-imagining of global picture book history: with the former Soviet Union at the centre of this narrative web. The result of an unusual collaboration between India and Lithuania, the book looks at two different global impacts of the Soviet picture book enterprise. At a particular period in Indian history, cheaply available Soviet picture books, in English and vernacular translations, changed the way Indian children read. This was part of the Soviet Union's efforts to spread 'socialist' culture across the world. Meanwhile, a different and more problematic kind of cultural 'globalization' was underway in the regions governed by the Soviet State, and Lithuania is a rich case in point.A sumptuous and unusual archive of art has been mined to go with this history: from socialist realist art to classic examples of the Lithuanian primitive-modern, many of the images in the book are featured in an English language publication for the first time.