Yulia Olefir is a well-known Ukrainian poet who, at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, wrote her first children’s book about the war, “Fairy Forest. The Adventures of the Naughty Raccoons”. The book almost immediately became a bestseller – it has already been published in its third edition and is recommended by the Ministry of Health to improve mental health, as well as for reading in the New Ukrainian School.
The book is dedicated to her sons, Myron and Makar, and to all Ukrainian children.
Whether fiction is relevant in times of war and how the full-scale invasion has changed the book market – Yulia Olefir spoke about this and many other things in an exclusive interview with Komersant ukrainskyi .
How to become a popular writer in Ukraine? Especially during the war, when people are saving money. They say it’sbetter to buy something toeat ratherthan buya book.This position is also understandable.
Speaking of children’s literature, now is the golden age of the Ukrainian writer. When I was actively sending my manuscript to publishers, it was the beginning of a full-scale invasion, and everyone replied: we don’t know if we will work at all. Later, the situation changed dramatically.
Firstly, our readers now want to read Ukrainian authors, not even foreign translated works, but our authors. I have a small bookshop. People often ask for a Ukrainian writer to support ours.
Secondly, after the full-scale invasion, Russian literature completely left our market. People outside the book business don’t even know what a huge part of the market was occupied by Russian publishers! They have all gone away. Now Ukrainian publishers publish not only translations but also Ukrainian authors. Now there is a desire to read Ukrainian, to support Ukrainian, even for children who speak Ukrainian very poorly, parents still buy a Ukrainian book and say “we will learn”.
Doyou understand the success of your book for children? How does it trigger Ukrainians?
My book is about our present, but in the form of a children’s fairy tale. “Fairy Forest. The Adventures of the Naughty Raccoons” is about a happy, carefree childhood in a fairy forest, which is the prototype of our Ukraine. The forest suffers from a terrible hurricane. A mum raccoon and her children are forced to leave the forest, while their dad stays behind to defend it. Mum and the kids go to the desert, live in unusual conditions and then, when the hurricane is over, they return to help rebuild this fabulous forest. The film ends with a symbolic phrase: a real golden autumn has come to the restored fairy forest.
This is all very close to each of us.
As for the popularity, I will not diminish my merits. I actively promoted this book, in particular through my own social networks. Of course, I am very lucky to have a publishing house that has made a very high-quality product, high-quality illustrations. Good pictures are 50% of a book’s success. Thanks to the publishing house, the book is available in all the best and largest bookstores in the country.
Then it was like a big snowball. From the very beginning, I declared about my book without any modesty: this book is cool. Children need it and they will love it. Then everyone who read it started actively discussing it and sharing it on social media.
Has the book been reprinted?
Almost all publishing houses make a standard first edition of a book – 2000 copies. This is a figure that allows you to print a book without taking risks and understand whether there is a demand for it among readers.
In Ukraine, a book is considered almost a bestseller if it sells 2,000 copies in a year. We left the printing house in June last year. In August, I received a letter from my publisher that the book would be reprinted. In October, we left the printing house with the second edition. This is the third and fourth thousand books. Now the third edition is out.
This really speaks to the success of the book. Honestly, sometimes I don’t believe that this is happening to me at all!
Are there many books in Ukraine that, like yours, go into their first, second, third printings..
In my publishing house, “Raccoons the Frolicsome” topped the bestseller list. In general, I looked at the figures for sales in large publishing houses – more than 10 thousand per year. In most cases, these are translated works by foreign authors.
We still need to get used to the fact that there are actually a lot of great authors in Ukraine. Ukrainian publishers can not only make great translations, but also create a quality product themselves. We have great illustrators. We can do anything. I’m sure that in the next 5-10 years, Ukrainian literature will begin to flourish.
The book “Fairy Forest. The Adventures of the Naughty Raccoons” is recommended by the Ministry of Health and the National School of Education as a book to improve the mental health of children during the war. How did you find out about this?
By chance. When my book came out, I was constantly looking for mentions of it on the Internet. One day I saw that NUS reposted a recommendation from the Ministry of Health about books that improve children’s mental health during the war. My book was listed there. I don’t know how it got there, but I understand that there are quite a few unions and organisations where writers and psychologists keep track of new books.
At Kyiv Book Weekend, a girl came up to me to buy my book. She didn’t know I was an author and said: “I really want to buy this book, I’ve heard about it. Tanya Stus (poet, literary critic, children’s writer – ed.) came to our library and she praised this book very much.” We don’t know Tanya personally. It’s very nice.
“Raccoons and Raccoons isyour first book of fiction, but you are actually a famous poet. Why did you suddenly take up prose, and on such a complex topic? In fact, this book is about children of war.
In fact, I had no intention of writing books. When the war broke out, I left for Lithuania with my children. A girl I knew offered to write a fairy tale for children about the war. I refused, because I had never written anything like that… On the same day, while walking with my children, the characters began to come to my mind… I immediately felt that I was that raccoon mother, and the little raccoons, Morsyk and Liutyk (the main characters of the book – ed.), were my two sons.
And I have to explain to them why we had to leave our home, our Fairy Forest, tell them why we are in another country and why their dad can’t come to us. That’s how I wrote my first short story about the mischievous raccoons. I read it to my eldest son. He liked it. He asked for a sequel. We didn’t have any books with us, and my son always wanted to listen to something, so I started making up new stories about raccoons. That’s how my manuscript appeared, which can now be seen on bookstore shelves.
As you said earlier, your book is about war for children in simple language. How doyou react to the fact that young Ukrainians have now become a generation of children of war?
I once heard the news about payments to children of war. They say that these are those who have suffered physical or moral injuries. But it seems to me that these are actually all children, whether they stay in Ukraine or are forced to leave. War is stressful for every Ukrainian child. For me, the phrase “children of war” is very scary. I never wanted to hear it at all.
But still, we need to talk about it now. And with our children as well. I keep saying it because I don’t want them to say to me in 20 years’ time: no, mum, our brotherly people are over there.
Of course, each parent decides how best to explain, but we have no right to hide the truth from them. They have to understand who our enemy is, that childhood with sirens is not normal..
Yes, our children are indeed children of war.
As a mother and a writer, how do you restore children’s morale after the explosions and all the images of war? What and how do youexplain tothem about the war?
I would like to know the answer to this question myself. My youngest, who is 3 years old, doesn’t understand anything yet, but my eldest is the opposite. We are from Kharkiv, from an area that was heavily damaged. I’ve been there with him several times already (now Yulia Olefir and her children live in Kremenchuk – ed.) We went into our old yard, where all the doors and windows were broken, the asphalt was cut up. And I told the eldest: yes, a cluster bomb came here, and something else. Of course, he doesn’t understand everything, but we explain that the enemy has been pushed further to the border, and such cluster bombs are no longer flying, but rockets can.
I do not tell my son that people have died somewhere. I don’t read him all the news, but I think when he gets older, he will ask me. I will answer as honestly as possible. This is a very difficult topic.
I would like to see some kind of education at school, so that professional psychologists communicate with both children and adults. There is a saying that children are not small adults. They have a different perception. We have to talk to them about such difficult topics as simply as possible, through fairy tales, stories and cartoons.
In your opinion, what do you think books should be written about now? Is it only about the war? Is there aplace for fiction now, and is it appropriate at all?
Of course it is. Our people need fiction to relax, to learn something new, to calm down, and finally, at least while reading. I wrote my book on such a topic not because I wanted to “hype” or anything else. I just felt that way at that moment. Now my second book is being published. It is completely different, one hundred per cent entertaining. And I’m even preparing my audience for it. I don’t want to be perceived only as an author who writes works in which children see adventures and mothers hide their tears.
Also, “Raccoons the Mischievous” has already 2 parts of a sequel (not yet published – ed.) and they are also radically different. Yes, there are echoes of the war, but they are more about the victory of good over evil, about real miracles in life. I think the children will be delighted!
In general, I am against people writing books based only on the current situation. They say, “There is a war now, so I will write only about the war. And then it starts: a bunny was running, a bomb came, and its legs were blown off. I am against this. Everything should come from the heart.
How has Ukrainian demand for books changed since the beginning of the full-scale invasion?
It has changed dramatically, although I’m still surprised when people sometimes ask if I have any books in Russian (Yulia Olefir has her own small bookshop – ed.) Sometimes they even asked if there would be a Russian version of The Prancing Raccoons. Such questions always shock me because I am so outspoken on social media that it is impossible to ignore my position. I am a person who, after the adoption of the law on language, translated all my social media into Ukrainian and received a lot of hate for it. So no, I will never have books in Russian.
As for demand, I’m sure it has changed. A lot of people have changed their minds about Ukrainian books.
What should we do with Russian books that remain in our libraries and were bought before the full-scale invasion?
Everyone has to make a decision for themselves. In my father’s library in Kharkiv, there are many books in Russian from the Soviet Union. I myself wrote poetry in Russian and published three collections. I won’t say now that it didn’t happen. I even had about 50 copies of my first collection of poems in Russian. I sold them for donations to the Armed Forces.
You see, not only ordinary Ukrainians have books in Russian. They are still available in public libraries and shops. It’s just that not everyone talks about it. If a buyer wants to buy a book in Russian, I think they will sell it to him, perhaps with some kind of discount.
I’m against forcing people to do this – they have to come to everything on their own. I stand for the Ukrainian language with my hands, feet and everything I can, but I understand that the situation will change only when everyone decides one morning: that’s it, from now on, only the Ukrainian language will be spoken in our family. There is nothing stronger than the power of a conscious human decision.
Tell us, how difficult is it to publish a book in Ukraine?
It takes about a year of work to create a book. A proofreader, illustrator, and editor work on the book. Not all publishing houses accept manuscripts. They already have everything booked for several years in advance. So once you have a manuscript, start looking for publishers. They are all on social media. Ask them if they accept manuscripts.
Then you need to prepare a high-quality synopsis or excerpt. I would recommend hiring a good editor right away. The text should be 100% ready. You also need to send a cover letter (without water), in which you indicate what exactly you are ready to do to make the book successful, because it is primarily a business! And then wait for a response. Sometimes you have to wait six months, sometimes longer.
Can books be published only through a publishing house?
No, books can be published not only through publishing houses, but also independently or in half. If it’s a co-publishing, the publisher and the author of the book cover the costs in certain parts, for example, they split the cost of illustrations in half. You can also publish, as I said, as a self-publisher, which means that you take care of all the costs yourself.
Honestly, I was already preparing for self-publishing with The Prancing Raccoons because I made a lot of mistakes at the very beginning, but I’m glad that didn’t happen. I would not have published a book of this level on my own. Meeting my publishing house was like a lucky star shining over my head. We have a really great cooperation, which is already scheduled for 3 years ahead.
Do you plan to go international?
It’s not just my dream anymore, it’s my plan, and I’m confidently moving towards my goal. For example, when there are big book fairs, my publishing house goes there and takes my book to showcase. It’s also in the catalogues that are sent to other publishers, but it’s not easy.
Many people imagine it like this: I wanted the book to be published in Spanish, found a Spanish translator, and had it published. No, it doesn’t work like that. Now only the Black Sheep publishing house has the rights to my book. In order for the book to be published on a foreign market, a foreign publishing house has to buy the translation rights from mine, with my approval, of course.
Despite the fact that this is a very complicated process, I believe that my books will be sold abroad. Yes, it’s a one-in-a-million chance, but when I sent my first manuscript to our publishers, I thought so too. Then I thought that it was impossible to make the first book a bestseller, but I succeeded! Now there are no boundaries in my head, so I will do everything possible to be as successful as possible.