After a child learns to read using a Bukvar (typically around age 5), and before beginning systematic reading instruction in a non-Russian-language school—so as to avoid language interference—it becomes essential to further develop reading skills. These include reading fluency and speed, comprehension, retelling, and creative interpretation of texts. An equally important part of learning to read is developing a sense of humor and an understanding of wordplay and linguistic nuance.

Our Readers are designed for children ages 5 through 11. Each volume is carefully structured, with texts progressing from simpler to more complex. The selections follow the rhythm of the seasons and explore a wide range of themes—friendship, animals, adventures, mysteries, and everyday life—across multiple genres, including poetry and prose, short stories, novellas, fairy tales, jokes, tongue twisters, and more. Every prose text is accompanied by a focused lexical and grammar activity.

The Readers include many works by contemporary authors who are often unfamiliar to a broader audience. Through these selections, we introduce parents—many of whom left their home country at a young age—and teachers to new voices and modern texts in Russian literature. At the same time, for historical and cultural continuity, we also include a small number of classic works by authors such as Pushkin, Fet, Lermontov, Tsvetaeva, and Blok.

Why so much poetry?

We firmly believe that poetry is one of the most powerful ways to play with language—to listen to it, feel it, remember it, and truly experience it through sound, rhythm, and rhyme.

All illustrations for the series were created by artist Elena Romanovskaya.

The authors of the Readers are curriculum specialists and educators Maria Bernstein, Maria Dudnik, and Ilya Bernstein.