Anna Starobinets
| Strana khoroshikh devochek | Land of Good Girls. Children's book. Moscow 2009. 160 pages Age 7-14 |
“Oh, if only Polya was a good girl!” – more than once Polina Petrova heard these words from her mother and father, the elder brother, both grandmothers and both grandfathers. Even Baguette the cat seems to think of her in that way. Only the dog Balbes sees things differently, but his opinion doesn‘t count. And then, on New Year‘s Eve, a good girl is ringing the door bell and the wish comes true: the bad girl Polya stays in the old year, and instead the Petrovs get a new, well-behaved, neat girl. But a completely different one of course. The real Polya needs to be reeducated in a very clean and scary tidy place where kids only eat healthy food, love to clean and do eve- rything according to a plan.
The „Land of Good Girls“ is a kind of child dystopia. This country cannot be found on any world map and its borders are closed. Only the faithful dog Balbes can sniff out the way. And only the red heroic cat Baguette can cross the border between past and present to save his beloved owner. After all, Baguette is not a simple Moscow cat, but the descendant of powerful old Catlantids.
| Kotlantida | Catlantis. Children's book. Moscow 2011. 128 pages (sequel to Land of Good Girls) Age 7-14 |
| Foreign rights: | Greece/ Octana, Spain/ Dolmen, Turkey/ Baobab, UK/ Pushkin Press |
| Awards: | 2017 Observer and Telegraph Children’s Book of the Year |
Baguette is just a regular house cat. She likes to sit in the window, watch the birds, and eat three square meals a day. But what‘s a regular house cat to do if he falls in love with a beautiful street cat who has some very strange - and really rather dan- gerous - demands? Baguette inherited the ability to travel through time from her great-great-grandfather, who once came to Russia in a van carrying French bread. So now she must travel back through the Ocean of Time to the lost island of Catlantis. She must find a way to save the nine lives of all cats before it is too late. And she must outwit the wicked black cat Noir, who is hot on her tail. Only then can she hope to win the paw of Purriana...
