The Littlest Matryoshka

This is a wonderful story. I used it as an activity for teaching Russia during our third grade Christmas Around the World day and the children loved it!! I even liked it after reading it 6 times that day. The toughest part was figuring out how to pronounce "Matryoshka." I finally decided to say it ma*truh*yo*shka. Hopefully that was correct :)

This is a darling book. The story is just so sweet. I enjoy reading it to my boys. Wasn't sure how interested in reading a book about "dolls" would be, but they enjoy it.

This is a lovely tale about the connection of a family. For families formed through Russian adoption this is an enormously poignant story - the ending, where the littlest matroyshka doll is reunited with her sisters, serves as a metaphor for how we find each other, even though oceans previously divided us. I agree that the ending is far-fetched, but it's also very satisfying!

Although the set of coincidences leading to the happy ending is far-fetched enough to raise a toddler's eyebrows, this sweet story extolling the sisterhood bond is a favorite in our home. The matryoshkas, or nesting dolls, have human emotions. They grieve the loss of their littlest sister, the center doll carved from the heart of the wood. Yet their inability to behave as people do leaves them helpless. "They could not lift their painted arms to reach out..." After the littlest matryoshka is reunited with them, the young girl who owns the dolls places them in a circle so that each can look at her sisters' faces and rejoice. Only then do the dolls' painted smiles really mean something.Each of the dolls is given a name. Several times throughout the story, their stacking order is chanted. "Nina inside Nadia, and Nadia inside Vanda," and so on. This repetition helps make the story a fun read-aloud book for young children.Kathryn Brown's watercolor illustrations are not only cute, they also teach the reader something about matryoshka costuming. When we first meet the toy maker crafting the matryoshka set, each doll's outfit is being decorated slightly more elaborately than the previously painted doll. Similarly, their faces are drawn with progressively more detail. Though the difference between any two consecutive dolls is hardly remarkable, the cumulative effect of adding increasingly more decorations is apparent when they are lined up next to each other. Reading this book just once helps the novice gain new appreciation for the subtleties involved with this old Russian folk art tradition.In summary, this is a delightful book that will be appreciated by children and adults alike.