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[MARSHAK] Shkola na kolesakh [i.e. School on Wheels]

Marshak, S.

Item #2270

Moscow: Detgiz, 1951. 16 pp.: ill. 28x22 cm. In original illustrated wrappers. Near fine.

First and only edition.
One day, Samuil Marshak received an unusual letter from a teacher of a track repair station. The track repair station No. 61 (TRS) was established in 1944, to restore railway lines destroyed by World War II. Workers moved between Siberia, Azerbaijan, the North Caucasus, Povolzhye, etc. All equipment and personnel of the TRS were housed in cargo and passenger cars.
Marshak got to know about a school for 1-4 grades set up in one of the carriages in 1948. Just like the engineers who regularly moved around the USSR, their children lived and studied alongside them. The school was organized by a single female teacher.
The poem was first published in the magazines ‘Gudok’, ‘Novyi mir’ and ‘Murzilka’ in 1950. The author told about the wonderful traveling life of the children who had the opportunity to learn the country’s geography visually. In fact, train cars and equipment were ramshackle, and the TRS stayed along one railway segment for months and years.
The design of the book was created by graphic artist and illustrator Mikhail Taranov (1909–1973). He studied under I. Bilibin, M. Radlov, K. Rudakov. Since the late 1920s, he contributed to many periodicals, including ‘Smena’, ‘Vokrug Sveta’, ‘Leninskaya Iskra’, ‘Rezets’, etc. In the early 1930s, he was appointed the head of the art department of the Vokrug Sveta magazine. Apart from the book illustrations, he designed propaganda posters and created engravings and lithographic prints. As a professor at the Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, he headed the book graphics workshop for a long period.

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