Send Me a Letter

By Ekaterina Shatalova

The armed conflict in Eastern Ukraine, which began in 2014 and escalated into the devastating war in Ukraine on the 24th of February 2022, has irrevocably impacted the lives of Ukrainian children. Their daily struggles are reflected in letters and diaries, which provide authentic child perspectives.

One of the earliest books was Letters on the War: Children Write to Soldiers / Листи на війну. Діти пишуть солдатам (Bratske Publishers, 2015). Designed by Olena Staranchuk and translated into English by Oksana Lushchevska and Michael Naydan, this bilingual book includes ten letters written by Ukrainian children to soldiers fighting in the war in Eastern Ukraine. As stated in the publisher’s foreword, the book was created to serve as “a mediator in a dialogue between children and adults on the topics of peace, freedom and social justice.”

The editors, Valentina Vzdulska and Oksana Lushchevska, collected children’s letters from different regions of Ukraine, but mainly from the Kyiv, Cherkasy, and Ivano-Frankivsk regions. As they explain their selection process, “While organising the letters, we focused on the construction of an internal plot, as well as the universality of the values that children talk about.” It was also important for the editors to preserve the authenticity of the letters; that is why they kept the original spelling and style.

Most authors of the letters are aged seven to ten and express the same worries and fears, dreams of peace and hopes for the fate of Ukraine and faith in victory: “We are at war. I feel scared because of it. My father is in the military and I am praying for him and everyone who defends my Ukraine. I dream for every father to return to his children. Every son to return to his mother. Because people are born to live.”

But it was not just the content that required an extra careful approach. One of the biggest challenges was not to lose the children’s sincerity and ‘naivety’ in visual design. According to the book designer, Olena Staranchuk, this was achieved through the use of bright colours and modern typography. For each letter, its own composition was created based on the elements present in the text, as if children’s messages came to life, turning into a field of words, banners, and posters. The selected palette often deploys the colours of the Ukrainian national flag, with one of the spreads representing it as an endless field of wheat and blue sky – an image that has become symbolic in the last past months. The book’s cover itself depicts a dark blue dove, a universal symbol of peace, against a yellow background.

This collection of letters represents a unique layer of culture – not only Ukrainian but also global – as it voices the themes of peace and freedom in the context of war through the eyes of a child. Therefore, it was particularly important to make this book bilingual in Ukrainian and English, which allowed it to appeal to an infinitely larger audience of readers. Nowadays, for example, this book is read in American and Canadian schools. As Oksana Lushchevska explains, the main idea was to capture the language of peace:

Knowing that bilinguals expand the understanding of global connections and global consciousness, lay the foundations of cosmopolitanism, support the perception of the other and increase empathy, we set a goal to preserve this ‘language of peace’ in two languages, because we believe that the book will be of interest to both Ukrainian and international readers (barabooka.com.ua).

The first edition of the book sold out very quickly. However, it became relevant again earlier this year, as Ukrainian mothers were looking for words to comfort their children and the children were looking for hope and faith in the words of adults. The book resurfaced in Google search results. In April, the Ukrainian Vogue called it one of the best Ukrainian books that “teach children resilience and hardening of the spirit from a young age.” After all that, it was decided to republish it with a new publisher, and now the editors are preparing the second part of the book – Letters Home. Soldiers Write to Children / Листи додому. Солдати пишуть дітям. The letters for this edition were selected by Nastya Shvayko, whose husband serves in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. After showing children’s letters to soldiers to lift their spirits, it was only logical to ask them to write back to the children so that there would be a complete collection.

Apart from giving a powerful insight into the child’s perception of war times, these gripping, urgent, and moving pages are historical documents that provide an immediate experience of events, reflecting our past and present and communicating universal values to future generations. Because, as the book editors emphasised in the foreword, “the language of peace, love, understanding, and acceptance […] is inherent in all people.”

 

Book Details

Letters on the War: Children Write to Soldiers (Листи на війну. Діти пишуть солдатам)

Valentina Vzdulska (edit.), Oksana Lushchevska (edit.), Olena Staranchuk (illus.)

Oksana Lushchevska and Michael Naydan (transl.)

Kyiv: Bratske Publishers, 2015

First published: 2 May 2023

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