Just So Stories by J.R. Kipling in Russian publishing and translation reception of the 20th-21st centuries

The article considers the book for children as a special model of the book in general. Its basis lies in the specific manner of social and cultural communication caused by the age and psychological features of a child's personality and also by the esthetic features of children's literature as a whole. Its important feature is a special "double" attitude of the author to a character: the attitude of "an adult" becoming "a child". On the basis of Kipling's Just So Stories analysis, the process of transformation of the book and book culture in a postindustrial (information-oriented) society is studied, the stages of the publishing and translation reception of the English literary tale in Russia in the 20th-21st centuries and the perception of the English world in Russian culture are outlined. As for the type of edition, Just So Stories by Kipling is a collection which includes prose, author's illustrations and annotations to them and poems which complete each story. Such a multilevel structure of the book represented the author's message, which was reflected in the publishing practice in England, English-speaking countries and partly in Russia in the 20th-21st centuries. The multilevel structure of Kipling's stories offers the reader different codes of their reading and interpretation: verbal, acoustic, visual. In this sense, editions of the English writer's stories in Russian translations follow the "principle of ensemble" when an artist becomes a co-author of translators of prose and poem parts and adds visual perception to the verbal-acoustic one in the whole collection and in separate tales. The analysis of Kipling's tales allowed raising the issue of the features of the esthetic nature of children's literature, comprehending the category "childhood" as a special philosophic-aesthetic phenomenon, exposing different translation strategies: the "targeted" translation by K.I. Chukovsky, the "translation-portrait" by S.Ya. Marshak, the "corporate" translation by G.M. Kruzhkov; and also studying the formation of children's "home" epos in the Russian literature of the 20th century. These stories form the images of Kipling and of the world of English literature for children in the Russian cultural consciousness. A determining fact here is that the universe of Kipling's Just So Stories is perceived as a "jolly universe". Editions of the English writer's stories also reflect the idea of the different models of books for children (author's collection, edition of a separate work of one author; literary, literary and art editions, educational literature in English and in two languages with commentaries), which are formed in the publishing activities of Russia in the 20th-21st centuries. The use of online sites with Kipling's stories makes it possible to broaden our views on the author's, translation and publishing strategies of Just So Stories in Russian culture in the first decades of the 21st century.

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