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On the Edge of the World by Anna Desnitskaya

Title: On the Edge of the World

Author: Anna Desnitskaya

Translator: Lena Traer

Illustrator:

Publisher: Eerdmans Books for Young Readers (USA)

Date Published: 2023

Format: Hardback

Genre:

Book Category: Picture Book

Age Range: 6-8

Original Title: First written in Russian. First published in the US by Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2023

Country of Origin: United States

On the Edge of the World

by Anna Desnitskaya
Age Range: 6-8

Vera lives on the eastern coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia. There is only the Pacific Ocean to the east and Vera’s mum says they live on the edge of the world and if they were to sail across the ocean for a long, long time, they would “eventually reach another country, somewhere like Chile.” Lucas lives in Chile in a small coastal town that his grandma refers to as “the real edge of the world.” Lucas says if “you sailed from our home across the Pacific Ocean for a long, long time, you’d eventually reach Australia or China or Russia.”

Residing on opposite sides of the world, both children are lonely and long for a friend. Vera’s days are spent playing with her dog Mukha and making a sekretik, “a little secret treasure”, while Lucas likes to play football, read and play video games. At the end of each day, both children make a trip to the beach. As the sun goes down, they stand at the shore’s edge and imagine they have a friend ‘over there’. Lucas and Vera both point a torch into the darkness and transmit a greeting in Morse code, “Hi, I’m Lucas” – “Hi, I’m Vera” hoping to receive an answer from somewhere beyond the ‘edge of the world’.

This uniquely designed debut picture book by Russian author and illustrator Anna Desnitskaya, translated by Lena Traer, is a two-sided flip book that allows the reader to choose which story to explore first. Both, follow a formulaic structure of two lonely children and their morse code messages that fuse together in their united longing for a friend.

Desnitskaya has used both manual and digital techniques in her illustrations with black pen and ink outlines and bold colour which has a graphic-novel-style feel. Throughout both stories, a yellow line drawing of a friend appears emphasising each child’s longing. This is a whimsical tale with a positive message.

One set of endpapers has a map showing the distance from the Kamchatka Penisula across the Pacific Ocean to Chile and on the other, there is an alphabet of International Morse code.

Desnitskaya graduated from the Moscow State University of Printing Arts and has been working as a children’s book illustrator mainly on non-fiction titles ever since. Amid the turmoil in Russia in 2022, Anna and her family decided to leave Moscow and after several months of living in Israel, they now live in Montenegro.