from the pen of a pioneering child linguist, the foremost translator who ever lived, and a man who never failed to criticize the Russian education system - and was never imprisoned! Anyone who is a champion of empowering the child will love this. Try to find the later edition, I think it's from 1968, as it has extra material. Anyone who writes songs or poetry for children could benefit from his baker's dozen rules for writing childrens' poetry in the appendix. Why is this book so short, when the original Russian work was so long? Because most of the examples in the Russian work come from Russian language, literature, and letters; so this much-abridged translation was prepared for English speakers who do not know Russian. As an added bonus, there is an excellent translation of Chukovsky's poem about the Cockroach in the back of this book.