PS18: Palaces on Monday

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.

( And they have a wonderful time... )

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?