such an incredible genesis.” Originally published by Ukrainian publishing house Vydavnytstvo, co-founded by Liliya Omelyanenko and Eliash Strongowski, Maya and Her Friends is the only Ukrainian children’s book to mention same-sex families and, as such, it was considered scandalous by some in its home country. However, according to Wicks it “became a bestseller and it gave rise to a lot of debate within Ukrainian societ”. She continues: “We like to regard ourselves as quite a value-driven company and we are passionate about supporting freedom of speech. It seemed like this was a really good opportunit, not only to work in a very collaborative and agile way with other Bonnier compa- nies, but also to do something profoundly worthwhile… And so began this incredible journey.” Wicks contacted Tiuraniemi just a few days aſter Ukraine was invaded and was put in touch with Omelyanenko. She tells me that Omelyanenko’s response to her approach brought tears to her eyes. “She said: ‘Thank you so much for your kind offer… You cannot appreciate how much we appreciate support from you and from other countries. And for us, as publishers, it is so very important to realise that we can be helpful in our sphere of influence.’” Wicks adds: “We all became very determined to do the deal quickly. We knew we had to move fast.”
Moving fast Two days later, Wicks and Omelyanenko had reached an agreement and Bonnier managed to get the paper and board cover material for the book giſted, with the title going to press around a week later. The colours on the book’s cover have been changed to those of the Ukrainian flag and Denysenko has provided a new foreword, writen in the midst of Russia’s atacks, which is included in Ukrainian as well as English. The names of the children within the story and Foya’s illustrations have remained unchanged, although the text has been updated in places
Denysenko’s foreword February 2022
32 children killed, 67 wounded. I do not need to consult a search engine, I know these numbers by heart. It’s currently the tenth day of the war, and this is official information that has been made public, but the Russian aggressor is bombing cities, towns, roads and villages in all regions of my country, and I am painfully aware that this figure is increasing. I wrote this book about different
children from different Ukrainian families in 2017, when Crimea was annexed and part of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine were temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation. I am writing this introduction from the corridor where we are hiding with my mother, who survived World War II as a child, and my dog, because there is another missile threat over the Kyiv sky.
I imagine that someone from
Maya’s class is now praying in a bomb shelter, someone else just wants Dad to be alive, and Mum to come back from police patrol. Another person has already lost a loved one. Some spent more than five days travelling to another country, some are crying as they sit in an unfamiliar town, and some are rereading Harry Potter and believing in magic that protects children. War is always catastrophic for children.
I want to shout that the children of my country need international protection. They have the right to a present and a future in which they are not under siege or occupation, not in a bomb shelter, not under fire, but in safe and peaceful homes, surrounded by loving families. The world needs to understand this.
and explanations for events, such as Russia’s 2014 inva- sion of Crimea, have been included. There have been many logistical challenges along the
way. Wicks says: “It’s never easy to crash a title into a publishing programme with the speed that we did, but it was necessary. We’re talking to all our key retailers all the time and doing whatever we can just to get the copies moving.” Bonnier has donated the book widely, with copies going to the National Literacy Trust’s Welcome Reading Packs, the Bradford Ukrainian Communit Centre and US-based non-profit book donor programme Anaik’s Loving Library.
“And,” Wicks adds, “it became a bit of a quest to get it published in as many languages as possible.” While she admits that it has been “a challenge” to get a US publisher to pick the story up, the interest from European publish- ers has been “phenomenal”, with rights already sold in Finland, Germany, Poland, Sweden, the Netherlands (Frisian-language), Estonia and Iceland to date. “We were lucky that we went to Bologna a couple of weeks aſter I just about managed to get this off to press, so we were able to promote the book there… We just want this message, which has huge resonance now, to have as much publicit as possible.”
Spreading love
Explaining what she wants readers to take away from the book, Denysenko tells me: “It is important to me that adults talk to children about how the world works. Why every child and every family is important. Why someone lives in their own way and it is different from us. It is an opportunit to get acquainted with your neighbours, with different cultures, and to tell them about yourself, about kinship and difference.” Wicks feels that the story’s message about tolerance and acceptance will ensure it is “well-received and widely read”.
She describes working on the book as “a great exercise in collaboration”, saying: “I think there’s so much that we can learn [from each other]. And I think it’s learning that when the occasion calls for it, we can work that quickly and we can be that collaborative.” An important motivation for her was reassuring Omelyanenko that “she could work to spread the word in her professional capacit”, a connection which she believes has “made such a difference at a time when the country has been just ripped apart”. Reflecting on what life is currently like for Ukraine’s
literary communit, Denysenko reports that many of her colleagues, such as the writers Artem Czech and Artem Chapai, “are at war now”. Several more friends who are writers, directors and poets have had to leave their home- land, while the International Book Arsenal Festival, which was due to take place in Kyiv in May, has been cancelled. She feels that the country needs to be able to defend itself in order “to be able to meet our friends and relatives when chestnuts bloom, to write, to publish and to read books with our children”. Signing off her email to me, she writes: “You know, I understand weapons so well now that I’m amazed at myself… This is not the most common knowledge for a children’s writer, but that’s how we live now.”
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