Book Descriptions
for The Apartment by Alexandra Litvina and Anna Desnitskaya
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
Intricately detailed illustrations and a brief text show a hundred years of Russian history as lived by generations of ordinary people in the same living space. Talk about a sense of place! The cut-out views of the few rooms in a house-turned-apartment, and all the people and some of the objects within, are chronicled over the course of a century, all while giving readers a sense of the times in which they are living, including political events that often drastically impact their lives. Although this ingenious book is mostly a visual experience, it is not a quick read, requiring careful examination of the illustrations to follow multiple storylines in addition to reading the textual narrative. The author and illustrator use a few devices to slow readers down and to give them a focus: the extensive “family tree” of the apartment’s residents, the red arrows and question marks that signify you can find this object on future pages, and, of course, the chronological order of each spread. This has the charm and appeal of a dollhouse, and the weight of Russian history as lived by common people. (Ages 9–13)
CCBC Choices 2020. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2020. Used with permission.
From the Publisher
In this picture book from author Alexandra Litvina and illustrator Anna Desnitskaya, 20th-century Russian history comes to life through six generations of a family in their Moscow apartment.
The Apartment: A Century of Russian History explains the true history of 20th-century Russia through the fictitious story of a Moscow family and their apartment.
The Muromtsev family have been living in the same apartment for more than a century, generation after generation. Readers are taken through different rooms and witness how each generation actually lived alongside the larger social and political changes that Russia experienced. A search-and-find element has readers looking for objects from page to page to see which items were passed down through the generations.
Beautifully illustrated with minute details, this book helps readers engage with Russia’s history in an all new way. The book includes a timeline, glossary, bibliography, and index.
“Striking view into Russian history . . . This illustrated ‘living museum’ allows readers to glimpse ordinary lives through some not-so-ordinary times.” —Publishers Weekly
The Apartment: A Century of Russian History explains the true history of 20th-century Russia through the fictitious story of a Moscow family and their apartment.
The Muromtsev family have been living in the same apartment for more than a century, generation after generation. Readers are taken through different rooms and witness how each generation actually lived alongside the larger social and political changes that Russia experienced. A search-and-find element has readers looking for objects from page to page to see which items were passed down through the generations.
Beautifully illustrated with minute details, this book helps readers engage with Russia’s history in an all new way. The book includes a timeline, glossary, bibliography, and index.
“Striking view into Russian history . . . This illustrated ‘living museum’ allows readers to glimpse ordinary lives through some not-so-ordinary times.” —Publishers Weekly
Publisher description retrieved from Google Books.
