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Locomotive

Three beautifully illustrated classic Polish tales that will enchant the young readers of today In the late 1930s renowned Polish poet Julian Tuwim, was asked to write three poems for children. The publisher Przeworski connected the three poems into one book, Locomotive, and commissioned illustrations from celebrated Polish illustration duo Lewitt and Him. Locomotive was the beginning of a creative partnership that lasted many years. Featuring the original three poems, Locomotive, The Turnip, and The Bird’s Broadcast, children learn what’s inside each train carriage as it chugs along, how many people, animals, and friends it takes to pull a turnip from the ground, and what happens when birds of all kinds gather for a meeting in the woods. After its original publication in 1939 in Polish, Locomotive was swiftly translated into French and English the next year, appearing at a time when it would have been a surprise and a joy to encounter bright colors and modernist- inflected imagery. Both classic and modern, its imaginative storytelling and appeal has endured and will delight children today as much as it did eighty years ago.

Mr Miniscule and the Whale

Julian Tuwim (1894-1953) was one of Poland's leading poets. He won fame not just for his adult verse but also for his rhymes for children, many of which are classics known to every Polish child. He also wrote satirical verse and loved word games, inventing palindromes (whole sentences that read the same forwards and backwards), lipograms (whole paragraphs that leave out a particular letter),and tautograms (sentences where every word starts with the same letter). Nobody knows if he ever set out to sea to see a whale.Bohdan Butenko (born 1931) is one of Poland's top illustrators, whose drawings appear in more than 200 children's books. He is also famous for his animated cartoons - especially featuring Gucio the clumsy hippo and Cezar the sensible dog - as well as for his stage sets and television design. He has won many prizes, among them the 2012 Order of the Smile - a special medal awarded by children to adults who are particularly kind to them.

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