Barto, Agniya. Mashenka (Машенька). Illustrated by Elena Afanasyeva. Moscow: Detgiz, 1956. In Russian.

Барто, Агния Львовна (1906-1981). Машенька : стихи : для дошкольного возраста / Агния Барто ; рисунки Е. Афанасьевой ; ответственный редактор Э. М. Эмден ; художественный редактор С. М. Алянский.
Москва : Детгиз, 1956. [14] страниц с цветными иллюстрациями ; 22 см.
Мягкая издательская обложка. Тираж 500 000 экземпляров. Подписано к печати 21 августа 1956 года.
Обложка - хорошее: потертости и загрязнения по краям и углам, легкие заломы, бумага равномерно потемнела. Блок - хорошее: крепкий, полный, иллюстрации чистые и яркие.
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Barto, Agniya Lvovna (1906-1981). Mashenka : poems for preschool children / Agniya Barto ; drawings by E. Afanasyeva ; editor E. M. Emden ; art editor S. M. Alyansky.
Moscow : Detgiz, 1956. [14] pp., with colour illustrations throughout ; 22 cm.
Paper wrappers. Print run of 500,000 copies.
Wrappers good: rubbing and light soiling to edges and corners, small creases, even toning of the paper. Text block good: firm and complete, illustrations clean and bright.

One of the best loved picture books of the Soviet nursery, and the title on which the reputation of its illustrator principally rests. Agniya Barto (1906-1981) was the dominant voice in Soviet poetry for the very young from the 1930s onward, and the Mashenka cycle, written in 1948, follows a small girl through a single day of her early childhood: waking with the sun, discovering her own reflection in the mirror, mothering her doll, feeding the goldfinch in its cage, and falling asleep to a lullaby. The verse is deliberately plain and musical, built for children who cannot yet read, and it entered the Russian domestic repertoire in the way nursery rhymes do, learned by heart and passed on rather than read. The illustrations are by Elena Afanasyeva (1900-1998), a graphic artist and portraitist raised in Chita and Harbin who joined the Moscow union of artists in 1932, drew for Murzilka and Druzhnye Rebyata through the 1930s and 1940s, and served on the artistic council of the Diafilm studio from 1954. Her work here is in transparent watercolour, closely observed from life and free of the flat decorative stylisation that dominated Soviet children's publishing of the period: the toys scattered across the page margins, the tabby cat with her kittens, the child asleep under a quilted blanket. Of this book it was said that the pictures surpassed the verses, which for a children's illustrator is the highest praise available. Issued in enormous numbers by Detgiz and read to destruction in ordinary households, it survives far less often than its print run suggests, and clean complete copies of the 1950s printings are the ones collectors of Soviet book illustration actually look for.