Students of St Petersburg University become fairy tale tellers during the lockdown

The federal project ‘From Home – into Fairy Tale’ was created with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, ‘MTS’ and the Russian movement of schoolchildren. It started in April. More than 350 volunteers took part in the project, among them there were students at St Petersburg University, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia and other major Russian universities.

Fairy tales with happy endings

Volunteers got access to the list of fairy tales from the collection of the Russian State Children’s Library and ‘Children’s Radio’. They studied the catalogue and chose fairy tales for children of different ages.

When someone called the hotline for children and teenagers, fairy tale tellers offered them to choose from several fairy tales. Among them there were ‘The Little Pig in the Prickly Fur Coat’, ‘Moydodyr’, ‘Moomins’, ‘Mary Poppins’, ‘The Magic Swan-Geese’, ‘The Marsh King’s Daughter’, ‘Aladdin and the Magic Lamp’, ’The Star Child’, ‘The Love for Three Oranges’, and ‘The Cat that Walked by Himself’.

First, I picked the fairy tales that I liked and offered the kids the most interesting ones. However, kids would often prefer the fairy tales that I found boring.

Anastasiia Pereverzeva, student at St Petersburg university

Very often children asked to read them their favourite fairy tales, including the ones about animals and travels. The readers tried to avoid sad or scary pieces and selected the tales with happy endings. ‘We looked through the endings first, because reading a fairy tale with a sad ending was very upsetting. As a child you don’t pay attention to the fact that Kolobok dies at the end of the story, but rereading the fairy tale as an adult you perceive it differently,’ Alina Borodkina said. Daria Astanina mentioned that from 7 May until 11 May children who were older than eight could listen to stories about World War Two.

Listeners who stayed in memory

According to the participants of the project, each of them answered several dozen telephone calls during this month. Sometimes there were more than 15 calls a day.

Some of the listeners happened to make a lasting impression on the readers. For example, Tatiana Parkhomova remembers a boy named Artemii. He told her that he liked reading about yachts and knew everything about them. For him Tatiana chose a fairy tale about sea travels ‘Sindbad the Sailor’.

Mariia Antipova told about a call from a 70-year-old man. ‘He asked me to read something about love. He was alone and felt very lonely. I could hardly hold back the tears while reading. When I finished, he thanked me. He said that I had a good voice, and that he was sorry he might get a different reader if he called again.’

Pre-reform orthography, prankers and other challenges

The volunteers face challenges at times. For example, Kseniia Vinnikova said that some of the fairy tales were available only in an abridged version. Alina Borodkina told about a different problem: the ‘Frog the Traveller’ fairy tale was printed in pre-reform Russian orthography, so she had to improvise while reading.

Sometimes volunteers had ‘difficult’ callers. There were many teenagers who did not want to listen to fairy tales: they would just chat or laugh. Sometimes children spoke in a very low voice, because they were too shy to speak to strangers. Fortunately, their parents would help them out and picked a fairy tale for them.

It was a great experience both for us and for the kids

Students admit that they took part in the project not only for their own experience, as they also enjoyed talking to kids. ‘I remember myself as a kid: I could never entertain myself and was happy when adults spent time with me, playing or telling me stories. I believe it is very important for children,' Sofiia Riazanova said. Many volunteers mentioned that they received a valuable experience which could later be used in a professional sphere. ‘I specialise in communications, so I need to know how to speak over the phone with different people: both kids and adults,’ Kristina Nisenbaum said. She also mentioned that having worked with the project for a whole month, she became acquainted with many fellow-volunteers.

During the project I received telephone calls from many nice and clever kids from many towns. It was a real pleasure to read them fairy tales and to hear them thank me. It was incredibly positive.

Kristina Nisenbaum, student at St Petersburg university

‘Reading fairy tales is a pleasure. It is even a bigger pleasure to develop your acting skills, trying to imitate different voices. You might feel uncomfortable to do it in your everyday life, but if you have an attentive and curious listener, you will do your best for them and enjoy it yourself,’ said Daria Astanina.