The Wizard of Oz. Volkov A.

In 1936, Alexander Melentievich Volkov drew attention to the essay of the American writer Frank Baum “Sage from the Lake Country”. After the author’s processing, this fairy tale turned into the now famous story “The Wizard of the Emerald City”, the first version of which, closer to the original tale of Baum, was published in 1939. The success of the story was largely determined by Volkov’s talents, and they were diverse. The future writer at the age of five had already read Main Read, and at twelve he began to write the first novel. After graduating from the Tomsk Pedagogical Institute, in seven months he passed the course of the Faculty of Mathematics of Moscow University.

In addition to the “Wizard”, the final edition of which appeared in 1959, Volkov had many other works for children and adults, but it was the cycle of books about the adventures of Ellie and her friends that made him one of the most read children's writers Russia. After the “Wizard”, his books “Urfin Juss and his wooden soldiers”, “Seven underground kings”, “The Fiery God of the Marranes” “Yellow Fog” and “The Secret of an abandoned castle” were published. The total circulation of Volkov’s works published in many languages ​​of the world exceeded 25 million copies.

The first version of the “Wizard of the Emerald City” in this edition is decorated with the drawings of N. E. Radlov. Having become at the beginning of the XX century. A student of the University of St. Petersburg History and Philology, he also entered the Imperial Academy of Arts, where the famous professor D. N. Kardovsky became its teacher. Radlov became famous as a cartoonist; He painted cartoon. I illustrated Radlov and books for children. The first such publication was the “Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain. In the same vein, drawings for the "Wizard of the Emerald City" are also made. They give a good idea of ​​the artist’s picturesque techniques-a few black and white strokes and lines form volume, convey the depth of space, the texture of objects and characters.

drawings to the processed text of the “Wizard of the Emerald City” are made by the talented artist V. A. Chizhikov. Back in his student years, he began to cooperate with the magazines Crocodile, Funny Pictures and Murzilka. His drawings regularly appeared on the pages of the magazines “Pioneer”, “Young Naturalist” and “Around the World”. Chizhikov illustrated more than two hundred books, including the works of Andersen, Chukovsky, Mikhalkov, Milna, Kuddyra, Marshak and Uspensky. In 1981, Chizhikov became an honored artist of the RSFSR, and in 2016 - a People's Artist of the Russian Federation.