PS18: Palaces on Monday

[shewhomust]

I've posted before about my collection of early Puffin books, and how the first few dozen titles have clearly been selected to convey education as well as entertainment. The "other titles" listed on the back of Puffin Story Book 18, Marjorie Fischer's Palaces on Monday, all have subtitles: the story of a cowboy's horse, the story of a Russian lynx, a tale of the Indian jungle, a page in Richard I's day... Even so, Palaces on Monday came as a surprise: it's the story of an American brother and sister travelling through the Soviet Union to rejoin their parents who are working there.

The (original, presumably) Random House edition was published in 1936; this Puffin edition followed in 1944. The story starts in New York: Father, who is an engineer, cannot find work at home, but there are jobs in Russia, and when the long-awaited letter arrives, the parents set off leaving Peter (aged 12) and Judy (aged 10) to follow. This is all told as if it were the most natural thing in the world, which I suspect it isn't - it is simply necessary to set up the story. The children sail unaccompanied from New York to London, where a friend of their mother shows them the sights and puts them on the boat to Leningrad; when they reach Leningrad they discover that Father's work has taken him to Erevan, and that Mother has flu and is convalescing in Sochi; so now they must travel via Moscow to Gorky, and take the Volga boat, the train, the bus over the Georgian Military Highway...

Everyone they meet wants to show them the glories of their young country - and they are not always thrilled at the prospect: a bread factory, the subway, what sort of entertainment is that? But the bread factory is a world in miniature: "They saw the factory kitchen, which cooked meals for the people who worked in the factory, and the school for the older children of the people who worked in the factory, and they saw the blocks of apartment houses with tiers of balconies, and the gardens and the clubrooms, for the people who worked in the factory," not to mention the crèche, the library, the barber's shop, the wall-newspaper and - eventually - the bakery. As for the subway: "The station was like a palace under the earth, made of glowing marble in soft colours, yellow, and grey, and rose; light spread softly from a long row of bronze lamps." The children are enthralled; and when Peter comes across a group of young people working together to paint a wall, and they allow him to join in - he is completely won over.

This is significant, because Peter has his reservations about this modern paradise. The younger Judy takes novelty in her stride; on the boat to Leningrad she is "astonished and delighted" to realise that one of the "seamen" is a girl:

"Why not?" she said.
"It certainly seems crazy," said Peter, who was astonished and not delighted.

They are both disconcerted to meet a Black American boy, but luckily, the boy (whose name is Ted, and who was born in the US but grew up in Russia) knows that "[i]n America they treat negroes funny" and makes allowances for their unease.

As in all the best children's books, food is plentiful and vividly described: red apples and scarlet tomatoes and large buns with sugar dusted on them, sold on the railway platform to travellers on the train, okrashka soup at the Park of Culture and Rest "sour and bubbly and not like anything you could possibly want to eat", shashlik in Tiflis with the great film-director - because naturally they meet a film director (and naturally this happens in Georgia). Also naturally Peter, who wants to be an engineer when he grows up, repairs his car which had broken down, and Judy, who wants to be an actress, is given a part in his film.

All this is entertaining to read, but also profoundly unexpected. As a child I was given books produced by the Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, in which Young Pioneers kept chickens and suchlike: but who knew that Puffin books were secretly producing even more forthright praise of the Soviet Union?

Comments

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

Fascinating!

(Only about 4 years ago we went on a tour of the underground marble palace that is Moscow's subway.)

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

It's over 20 years since we were there: at that time it was certainly as described. I'm glad to hear it still is...

I loved this book as a child!

[(Anonymous)]

Out of nowhere I remembered this book and decided to google the title. Imagine my surprise to find this description.

As a child I read a hand me down copy of this over and over again. I distinctly remember a scene in which they are at a fair and go on a ride which is a sort of parachute ride... I have always wanted to ride that! Mostly what I remember about the book is that the main characters were so very independent - just what any child wants to be.

The copy I grew up reading was my mother's from her childhood. As she said when I asked her why there was such a pro-soviet book in the house "It was during WWII and the focus was more on how the USSR was our ally. this book was just another way to convince people of that fact." It's funny because I grew up in the profoundly anti-Soviet 80s.

I still love that book and when my sister recently went to Moscow she sent me a postcard of the metro and wrote that it was 'just like Palaces on Monday'.