Books for teens in Ukrainian

[TheSunnySide]

Hi there,

I have been attempting to do some research on this on the internet but am drawing a blank. I am working with some Ukrainian students and recently took part in an initiative where all students at my organisation received a free book. We have a number of teenage Ukrainian students and I felt really bad that we only had books in English. It looks like there are books in Ukrainian for much younger kids but I am finding it so hard to source anything for older kids. I wondered if there are any people from the Ukraine or who know the country well and could let me know who the main authors in the country are and if there are such things as British classics translated in to Ukrainian?

I wonder if there might be people here from different countries who could tell me who the famous authors for kids are in their home countries?

who is the German JK Rowling or the Polish Phillip Pullman?

I have no idea but you could try libraries, they've probably looked into this.

As for the German JK Rowling, I guess one similar author (whose books are available in English) is the lady who wrote Inkheart/Tintenherz - Cornelia Funke.

One English author who I know is widely translated is Jonathan Stroud, though I don't know if there's a Ukrainian version.

I am a librarian. It is surprising how difficult it is to find this info.

Your best bet is the Russian version. They'll understand about 60-70%
Polish kids start reading at 6/7 and generally with something called elementarz. It's a book of short stories and phonics. They are expected to progress very rapidly and start chapter books with their class and individually. The language is much easier to read as it's not phonetic like English. It's so much harder to learn to read English. Ukrainian and polish, what you read is what you say.
The government sets a set of books each class must read annually. This is a list from a random school. It's the same for everyone.
szkolybenedykta.pl/lektury-dla-klas-i-iii-szkoly-podstawowej/

Klasa 1 is year 1 which is roughly the UK year 3.
It's a very different concept to the UK and it's not as common to have kids read lots of different books at home. Idk if this is left over from communism but generally they read their 'lektura' which is the books set by the government for that year. The lektury have been the same for eons. Of course plenty of kids will read widely but it is different than here. Books are also very expensive there and libraries mostly stock the 'lektury'. You can see the problem.
I believe it's very similar in Ukraine. Common books like Harry Potter, Hunger Games etc are all widely available though. There are lots of polish online libraries online that are UK based. I'd be surprised if they don't have Ukrainian ones.

ksiegarniainternetowa.co.uk/en

This is the one we've always used.

www.augb.co.uk/
Try emailing these people or the Saturday Ukrainian school in London:

stmarysukrschool.co.uk/en/

I could be wrong but from my personal experience Eastern Europe is not heavily into fantasy, rather more into age-appropriate historical fiction, also adventure and travel, real or imagined but not fantasy.
They also read lots for homework

Might this help? www.tault.org Look too at worldkidlit.WordPress.com

I work in a library and they have found it very hard to source books in Ukrainian. We only have one kids book.

My guests (adults) are very heavily into Tolkien. They always have been but they are finding it particularly resonant right now.

I don’t think it’s just them because
apparently Tolkien role play (which sounds like LARPing) is a thing there.

Yeah, I’m not sure that is the best bet at the moment actually.

“Your best bet is the Russian version. They'll understand about 60-70%”

You really do run a risk of pissing someone off there. If a Ukrainian teen chooses to read a Russian book (or a book in a Russian translation) - fine. It’s not what I’d give though, at the moment.

This has been translated from English into German and I think it would work well for younger teenager, not sure about other languages:

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/9047509234/ref=dbs_a_def_awm_bibl_vppi_i10

@Testina I understand. I'm not oblivious to the situation I'm just saying matter of fact, the Russian versions will be more widely available. I've sent op links to places she could source Ukrainian books from, as well as explaining their education system which massively impacts the reading culture so she can understand. It's almost identical to the polish one.

I filtered this (Polish) site for books for young people, some are translated from other languages, might help. The site takes a while to load in English but it's there:

www.empik.com/ksiazki/dla-mlodziezy

Why don't you just ask the Ukrainian teens you age working with what books or authors they like? You might be able to get a kindle version of something.

You can get ukrainian translations of Harry Potter on Amazon but that's probably a bit young.

Have u considered bi-lingual books?

I have seen eg poetry and also children's books with one page in one language and opposite page in the other, even Shakespeare.

Here is one English/Polish example but I appreciate this one could be on the "young" side but it looks fun.

www.amazon.co.uk/All-Cats-Speak-Polish-Bilingual/dp/B09MYVVS3K

And here is Shakespeare:

www.amazon.co.uk/Shakespeares-Sonnets-English-Ukrainian-Shakespeare/dp/1517774381