A skeleton walked through the town

Our contemporary, Alexey Eroshin, a Siberian native, is a remarkably interesting person. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a photographer, a designer, a bard, a prose writer, and a poet. And amidst these wonderful and diverse talents, he is also an incredibly gifted children's author. Alexey writes about everything in the world with inimitable humor – about boys, dogs, parrots, other animals, and even a skeleton. Everything in his children's poems is wonderful: the flawless technique of versification – rhythms, rhymes, alliterations, etc.; and the most genuine children's themes – splashing in puddles, repairing a toy train, the eternal children's question "who is stronger – an elephant or a whale?"... And even the transparent "pedagogical" moral, present in many of his poems, is always formulated briefly and cheerfully and completely devoid of didacticism. And Eroshin's wordplay (the masterful poem "Anglichainoye") is a special delight. Eroshin's poems evoke a wealth of positive emotions. They are great for reading aloud, easily enrich a child's vocabulary, and are instantly memorized. "A chinchilla lived in a hut by the forest edge, And sewed clothes for every little beast. For the toad – a jabot. A raincoat – for the ferret. A striped vest – for the chipmunk." Maxim Pokalev's illustrations – a book graphic artist and daring improviser from Tatarstan – are a perfect match for Eroshin's fantastical poems. He caught, supplemented, and developed the author's plots with his "inventions" and made each spread of the book unpredictable and full of surprises. The book is excellent for joint family reading by adults and children of all ages, as well as for looking at the pictures.