Russia bombed the FaktorDruk printing press and warehouse in Kharkiv on May 23, killing seven people, injuring 22 and destroying more than 50,000 printed books. News outlets have reported the destruction of books by Ukrainian poets and philosophers – but on reflection, the greatest loss may be to children.
Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022, Ukrainian publishers have prioritised the production of trauma-informed books to help children and teenagers cope with living through war. We estimate that more than 120 new titles have been released, a cultural phenomenon that is without historical precedent.
Author Kateryna Yehorushkina was initially unsure whether it would still be possible to keep publishing children’s books in Ukraine after Russia’s invasion. She told us that when she had finished the manuscript of her book,The Holiday I Had to Take, in 2022, she didn’t know whether it would even be possible to print the book in Kharkiv.
With the help of Vivat Publishing, Yehorushkina has published four books in the past two years and all were printed at FaktorDruk. Reflecting on the attack on the FaktorDruk printworks, she told us: “Last fall, I came to Kharkiv to make my dream come true: to watch my book being printed and meet the magicians who work in the printing factory. Today Russian rockets took the lives of seven of them and many more were injured. Instead of children’s books – burnt wet pulp.”
The children in The Holiday I Had to Take go on a trip to their basement to stay safe from air raids. The heroine, modelled on Yehorushkina’s own daughter, misses playing with her friends when she’s sheltering in the basement, but the unprecedented connectivity of this contemporary war provides a solution: they can still play Minecraft online.
In the book, they rebuild a historic airplane and Ukrainian cities from scratch, agreeing that it is easier to believe in good things “virtually”.
Children’s tales from the frontline
Even soldiers in active combat are writing books for Ukraine’s children. Vitaliy Zapeka first joined the Ukrainian Army in 2014 and is currently on the frontline. Vivat and FaktorDruk published his recent series of books about Polinka, a four-year old girl cared for by her quirky grandparents.
Zapeka responded to the bombing of the printing house with an impassioned Facebook post: “They’re destroying our culture: people, people, people, books, books, books. F*** Pushkin. F*** Dostoevsky. F*** the Russian language.”
Since February 2022, Hryhoriy Abramovich Falkovych, a Ukrainian Jewish poet who at age 84 is not living through his first war, has published several books with the Lviv publisher Stariy Lev. These were also printed in Kharkiv at FaktorDruk.
Rudi and the Milky Way (2023) tells the story of a Jack Russell Terrier who accompanies Falkovych’s family from Kyiv to a safer town in western Ukraine.
Falkovych explains that family pets are also affected by “loud sirens, bomb shelters, by anxiety over loved ones and the fate of Ukraine, and by concerns about housing, medicine and food”.
Falkovych was inspired to translate Rudi the dog’s thoughts into “a more accessible human language”. We are translating Rudi’s story from Ukrainian into English, in the hope that that a global readership can access Falkovych’s wisdom and humour and share his love for his new town through beautiful drawings by Iryna Potapenko.
Sad (and neverending) story
Ukrainian writers are not only compelled to think about how books should represent war to children in a responsible way, they have to consider that their readers are living in a story that still has no ending. Many of the books published since 2022 have been written in collaboration with psychologists and include activities and direct advice for children and parents.
Kateryna Tykhozora’s Home, A Book About What Is Important (2024) is a picture book about a boy who had to leave his home after its destruction by Russian missiles. Powerful illustrations by Olexandr Prodan represent war as a threatening dark cloud with claws and teeth hovering over brightly painted houses.
The illustrations deftly combine black and white images of ruined buildings, shelters and crowded trains with the boy and his family foregrounded in strong bright colours.
Home ends with a torn-out page from an exercise book with the boy’s own drawing of his family in stick figures in front of their house. He can draw his vision of a better future but, importantly, the book does not suggest that a happy ending is near.
Ukrainian children who have resettled in other countries have not been forgotten. Halyna Tkachuk’s Blue Notebook was written in 2023 during a residency at the Borderland Foundation in northern Poland. The book was published by Vivat and printed at FaktorDruk but, appropriately for a preteen’s diary about her new life in Warsaw, it has already appeared in Polish translation.
Tkachuk is one of many writers and readers to post photos in memory of the seven printers and machinists who died “making beautiful, high-quality books for me, for you, for everyone”.
Nonetheless, we are certain that the destruction of 50,000 books in Russia’s latest “cynical crime against culture,” as CEO of Vivat, Julia Orlova, described it, will not discourage Ukrainians from investing in the psychological health of their future citizens through children’s books.