The legendary children's encyclopedia "What is it? Who is it?" Published by the Prosveshchenie publishing house in 1968. Made in the GDR. The two books of the encyclopedia contain “a thousand answers to a thousand questions,” most of which are decorated with first-class illustrations. The quality and originality of the articles, diverse in their subjects, organically woven into the necessary political context, distinguishes the encyclopedia from similar publications in recent years.
My grandmother had these books. I loved leafing through them as a child, before I could read.
The encyclopedia was prepared by the publishing house "Prosveshchenie", which selected authors and artists. The name was invented by L. Kassil.
Anonymous: I spent my entire conscious preschool and school life studying from this book. Now I'm looking for it in the original edition for my children. Modern encyclopedias cannot compete with this BOOK!
teplenkij):It was really cool to look at all these maps and diagrams on which little people were doing some kind of business, images of prehistoric monsters or, for example, portraits of historical monsters of figures of the ancient world (yes, just the map with the expeditions of the era of the GREAT GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERIES was worth it).I even had a special magnifying glass for this purpose, which retracts inside the black plastic frame.
ruspect_nmr:A really good book. Now our publishers sometimes publish such nonsense as children's encyclopedias, to be honest... Imitating fairly high-quality bourgeois publishing houses, but not really understanding how to actually do all this well, they cram in a bunch of pictures, so that anyone A normal person's eyes dazzle. There are, however, quite smart ones, but they are already for older children. And here, what’s good is that there are clear illustrations, quite thoughtful so that they are not colorful, and the text is just right for preschool and primary school age.
iamaglika.:They gave it to me “for my return from the pioneer camp”))) They copied and copied a lot from this book for wall newspapers and essays. After the 8th grade, we wrote an essay: “Praise be to the hands that smell of bread,” “My Motherland is the USSR,” etc.
emilia_g: Indeed - “Manufactured in the GDR”. Although about luxury... the paper is yellowish. And the format is large - it’s uncomfortable to read lying down. However, children should read exclusively at the table, with the correct lighting and head angle. So that the sun shines in a certain direction.
rizya: It was printed, needless to say, luxuriously; they didn’t skimp on children back then.
Who wrote the stories and drew illustrations for them?
Currently, books can be downloaded on the Internet. On forums about the iPad, some admitted that they had purchased an expensive gadget so that they could sit on the couch with their child and “flip through” Soviet-era children’s books, including this children’s encyclopedia.
The second edition was published by the Pedagogika publishing house from 1975 to 1978 and consisted of three volumes.
I had such books. For some reason I liked them less. Either the color of the covers is unnaturally orange, or the illustrations are not so “warm”. But my childhood friend loved leafing through them, as they contained detailed maps of all countries and their flags. Apparently there is too much politics.
Children's encyclopedia "What is it? Who is it?"The legendary children's encyclopedia "What is it? Who is it?" Published by the Prosveshchenie publishing house in 1968. Made in the GDR. The two books of the encyclopedia contain “a thousand answers to a thousand questions,” most of which are decorated with first-class illustrations. The quality and originality of the articles, diverse in their subjects, organically woven into the necessary political context, distinguishes the encyclopedia from similar publications in recent years.
My grandmother had these books. I loved leafing through them as a child, before I could read.
The encyclopedia was prepared by the publishing house "Prosveshchenie", which selected authors and artists. The name was invented by L. Kassil.
Anonymous: I spent my entire conscious preschool and school life studying from this book. Now I'm looking for it in the original edition for my children. Modern encyclopedias cannot compete with this BOOK!
teplenkij):It was really cool to look at all these maps and diagrams on which little people were doing some kind of business, images of prehistoric monsters or, for example, portraits of historical monsters of figures of the ancient world (yes, just the map with the expeditions of the era of the GREAT GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERIES was worth it).I even had a special magnifying glass for this purpose, which retracts inside the black plastic frame.
ruspect_nmr:A really good book. Now our publishers sometimes publish such nonsense as children's encyclopedias, to be honest... Imitating fairly high-quality bourgeois publishing houses, but not really understanding how to actually do all this well, they cram in a bunch of pictures, so that anyone A normal person's eyes dazzle. There are, however, quite smart ones, but they are already for older children. And here, what’s good is that there are clear illustrations, quite thoughtful so that they are not colorful, and the text is just right for preschool and primary school age.
iamaglika.:They gave it to me “for my return from the pioneer camp”))) They copied and copied a lot from this book for wall newspapers and essays. After the 8th grade, we wrote an essay: “Praise be to the hands that smell of bread,” “My Motherland is the USSR,” etc.
emilia_g: Indeed - “Manufactured in the GDR”. Although about luxury... the paper is yellowish. And the format is large - it’s uncomfortable to read lying down. However, children should read exclusively at the table, with the correct lighting and head angle. So that the sun shines in a certain direction.
rizya: It was printed, needless to say, luxuriously; they didn’t skimp on children back then.
Who wrote the stories and drew illustrations for them?
Currently, books can be downloaded on the Internet. On forums about the iPad, some admitted that they had purchased an expensive gadget so that they could sit on the couch with their child and “flip through” Soviet-era children’s books, including this children’s encyclopedia.
The second edition was published by the Pedagogika publishing house from 1975 to 1978 and consisted of three volumes.
I had such books. For some reason I liked them less. Either the color of the covers is unnaturally orange, or the illustrations are not so “warm”. But my childhood friend loved leafing through them, as they contained detailed maps of all countries and their flags. Apparently there is too much politics.
We continue to remember the legendary children's encyclopedia. The second volume of the publication includes articles on various topics starting with the letters "O" - "Z".
Below are some scanned pages from the second volume. As you can see, most of the pages have suffered greatly from time and generations of inquisitive readers, which however makes this tome, printed in the GDR, even more attractive and curious.
Cover of the second volume. Girl's head.
Page 15. Fragment of the article “Heredity” with illustrations.
Page 19. Article "Nansen, Fridtjof" with illustration.
Page 34. Fragments of the articles “Gadfly” and “Sheep” with illustrations.
Page 53. Fragment of the article “Orchestra with illustration.
Page 83. Fragments of the articles “First Aid” and “Primitive People” with illustrations.
Page 182. Illustrations for the article "Motherland".
Page 199. Fragment of the article "Airplane" with illustration.
Page 304. Fragments of the articles “Tractor” and “Transistor” with illustrations.
Page 378. Beginning of the article “Drawing” with illustration.
Page 394. Illustrations for the article “Chukovsky Korney Ivanovich.”
Page 408. Fragment of the article "Electric Current" with illustrations.
People have long valued books as an inexhaustible source of new information. The paper sheets reflected the thoughts and impressions of other people, knowledge about distant lands and amazing wonders. As they accumulated, the understanding came that it was most convenient to systematize the information and briefly present it in separate volumes. Thus, the desire for classification led to the appearance of short reference books about everything in the world, which received their own special name. What an encyclopedia is and who called it that is discussed in this article.
First thinkers
The idea of creating a universal reference book belonged to ancient philosophers. Ancient thinkers reflected on the world around them, and trusted their reasoning to parchment scrolls and clay tablets. And now archaeologists are finding fragments of ancient knowledge and trying to decipher them, separating truth from fiction. The archaic and often naive ideas of thinkers gradually formed into the volume of information that constitutes the encyclopedia of the world.
Origin of the word
The primacy in systematizing existing knowledge rightfully belongs to the French. People first learned what an encyclopedia is from the French scientist and writer Francois Rabelais. He composed this word from two Greek terms. Translated, they mean “circle of enlightenment.” The new concept well reflected what an encyclopedia is. Therefore, the name took root and entered the dictionaries of all modern European languages.
The first encyclopedists
The most famous first universal reference book was created under the auspices of the French Academy of Sciences and was called “Encyclopedia, or Explanatory Dictionary of Sciences, Arts and Crafts.” The multi-volume work was created more than 200 years ago and was a publication that briefly summarized all the knowledge available to scientists at that time. Diderot, D'Alembert, Rousseau, Montesquieu and others took part in writing the articles.
Under the letter “Z” the encyclopedists placed knowledge about the Earth, the letter “M” told about the sea, its riches, ships and fleet, and the letter “K” provided information about the kings of the past and present. This is how the first readers learned what an encyclopedia is. The role of reference literature in the world grew, and more and more readers could use these wonderful books.
Modern encyclopedias
A lot of time has passed since then. People have learned to compile various encyclopedias and encyclopedic dictionaries. These books are intended for readers of different ages and professions; they contain a lot of different information about a wide variety of areas of human life. The large encyclopedia is published in many countries around the world. The complete set of such a publication is over fifty volumes. The most famous universal reference book written in Russian is the encyclopedic dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron. Famous publishers worked together with many scientists and philosophers of the 19th century.
The main edition of the encyclopedia included 42 main volumes and two additional ones. Based on the multi-volume edition, the Great Soviet Encyclopedia was later published.
Nowadays, thanks to the Internet, encyclopedias have become even more accessible - many of them are now published in electronic form. The most popular world encyclopedia is Wikipedia. In it, each user can find all the currently available information about things, phenomena or subjects that interest him. Moreover, you can do this in your own native language.
The science of knowing
Modern encyclopedias open up to us a whole world of diverse information about all the things and phenomena around us, telling readers of different generations about them in an accessible way. But little whys get special attention among publishers. It is for them that a special format of reference literature was invented - a children's encyclopedia. In 1958-1962, the Pedagogika publishing house in the USSR published the first series of books with the same name, which went through three editions. The latter consisted of 12 volumes and was a real bestseller.
The main task of such a publication is to awaken the child’s interest in the tireless knowledge of our world. Therefore, not only scientists and writers, but also teachers are involved in writing articles for children. Scientists answer questions, writers translate this information into accessible language, and teachers advise how best to make “adult” scientific material fascinating.
The main goal of their work is to interest the reader by providing him with the most interesting information. Such work bears fruit over time.
Getting the first idea of what an encyclopedia is, reading interesting and easy-to-understand articles, the child begins to become interested in this or that area of human knowledge. As they grow older, teenagers continue to search for the information they need, and after graduating from school, it is quite possible that they will turn their childhood hobby into their future profession.
