Melik-Pashayev Publishing House: books, sources, description and reviews

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The publishing house "Melik-Pashayev" exists relatively recently. Despite the "retroname", it was created in the recent 2008 crisis year. Since then, books for children from birth to 10 years old with wonderful illustrations have been created here. What are the books that can instill in kids an artistic taste and a sense of beauty? Writers and artists working on the books of the Melik-Pashayev publishing house know the answer to this question for sure.

History of creation and logo

The "Melik-Pashayev" publishing house was created by two co-founder artists. This explains their close attention primarily to illustrations.

Maria Melik-Pashayeva - painter, illustrator, participant of a large number of exhibitions, collector of children's books, specialist in handwritten fonts.

Tatiana Rudenko - book designer, founder of the creative workshop at the Tretyakov Gallery. For many years she worked as an art editor at the "Kniga" publishing house.

Why such a seemingly "non-childish" name was chosen andlogo? The fact is that initially the publishing house was chamber and intended for a narrow circle of the intelligentsia. The project was financed by the Melik-Pashaev family. The surname is sonorous. Alexander Melik-Pashaev is a conductor whose name is widely known, Albert Melik-Pashaev is the head of the children's studio "Teatron". All this swayed the creators in favor of choosing just such a "retroname".

Reissues of favorite books

Invariably a warm welcome from readers meet reissues of old favorite books. Most of the reviews about the creations of the book house are requests to republish works that were loved in childhood, with the same illustrations, but in a modern quality. Gradually, "Melik-Pashayev" began to be perceived as a publishing house that gives new life to the timeless classics. And this is justified: quite a lot of reprints have been published. Tatyana Rudenko considers this one of the aspects of her work: she sees her work in publishing well-illustrated books for preschoolers. And it doesn't matter if it's a reprint or some previously unpublished literature. The main thing is that the child likes the book. And it’s quite difficult to understand which book a kid will love, because the authors are adults, and parents buy books. But publishers see their task in this. "Retro for the sake of retro, for the sake of commerce, we do not publish," says Maria Melik-Pashayeva.

"Melik-Pashayev" is a publishing house that republished books by such great masters as Vladimir Lebedev and Yuri Vasnetsov, LevTokmakov and Nikolay Radlov, Vladimir Konashevich and many others. The collection of the publishing house "Melik-Pashayev" contains books by Korney Chukovsky, Nikolai Nosov exactly in the version in which they were remembered and loved by modern adults.

Funny pictures

Separately, I would like to note a series of books on the magazine "Funny Pictures". The best Soviet illustrations for the magazine brought together will certainly interest a child of 3-5 years old and will evoke nostalgic moods in most mothers, fathers, grandparents. Ironic and funny, instructive and instructive, "Funny Pictures" were created over the years by the best illustrators of the Soviet Union, now they have been restored, selected subjects understandable to a modern child.

A children's book has two equal authors - a writer and an artist

To harmoniously combine the work of a writer and an artist is not an easy task. If this task was already carefully carried out and time-tested when republishing a book, then when choosing an artist for a new book, the publishing house gathers a whole council. After all, the "correct" drawing for a children's book is paramount. For example, it should be detailed just enough so that the child understands the essence of the subject. At the same time, there should not be excessive detail, which many modern books aimed at parents sin.

The book, according to the leaders of the publishing house, should be exactly what the author and artist intended it to be. You can not change its format, increase or decrease the number of pages. Althoughthis sometimes costs a pretty penny.

Another concept of the publishing house is not to make artificially created series. All books in a "family" should be originally conceived by the artists, and not just be framed in the same format.

Translations of bestsellers

"Melik-Pashayev" is a publishing house that places very high demands on translators. For example, when translating one of the books, the name of the character Percy was transformed into Uncle Willy because Percy in Russian is very similar to "Persy", which can cause confusion in the baby's head. In general, close attention to detail is what distinguishes the books of the Melik-Pashayev publishing house from the background of many other Russian publications.

During its existence, the publishing house "Melik-Pashayev" has released the following series of foreign books:

• Castor Beaver.
• Karlchen.
• Cat Meowli.
• Willi the watchman.
• Story in pictures.
• Tim's Sea Adventures.
• My cat.
• Bruno Bear.
• Mulle Mek.
• Zu the Zebron.
• Ernest and Celestina.

Books for babies - pictures with captions

A Russian adult reader does not always want to buy picture books common in the West: they have so little text, only pictures. But after all, this is exactly what a child needs when there are two or three lines of text under each illustration. He will review the book without parents many, manytimes.

One of the first works of the publishing house "Melik-Pashayev" was the story of Wilhelm Bush about Max and Moritz, standing at the origins of a children's book. "Melik-Pashayev" retold this old German fairy tale, focusing only on pictures. In the post-Soviet space, the Kharms translation is known: "Plikh and Plyukh". The publishing house decided to provide an opportunity for the contemporary author Andrei Usachev to compete with the great poet.

Many readers complain about the high cost of books from this publisher. But given the enormous amount of work that goes into each book, how much attention is paid to every "little bit", it becomes clear why this is happening and why their books are so often the most beloved in many families.