Brave Volodymyr: The Story of Volodymyr Zelensky and the Fight for Ukraine by Linda Elovitz Marshall with illustrations by Grasya Oliyko; New York: Quill Tree Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers; © 2023; ISBN 9780063-294141; 32 pages including appendices; $19.99.
SAN DIEGO – Children’s author Linda Elovitz Marshall has written numerous non-fiction and fiction books for children. This one, written for children 4 to 8, joins her biographies of such other Jewish luminaries as Anne Frank and Jonas Salk. In that Marshall’s great-grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from what is now Ukraine, the story of Ukraine’s embattled President Volodymyr Zelensky, Marshall’s fellow Jew, was especially meaningful to the author.
Boiling down a conflict that could flare into World War 3 is no easy task, particularly when the intended audience comprises preschoolers to 3rd graders. Marshall focuses on Ukraine’s repression by Russia prior to the breakup of the Soviet Union, its early experiences as an independent nation, and Zelensky’s rise from a television comedian, who played the role of Ukraine’s president, to being elected as that nation’s actual president.
Marshall casts Russia’s President Vladimir Putin as a villain seeking to restore Russia to its place at the head of a sprawling empire, subjugating free Ukraine in the process.
Zelensky is portrayed as a freedom fighter, who “knew that freedom is a fragile thing. It needs to be cherished. It needs to be protected. And freedom depends on truth.”
In an author’s note at the conclusion of the book, Marshall writes: “Unless we stop the horrors, they will continue … in country after country … No place will be safe. This book is my way of speaking out, of coming to the defense of the people in Ukraine. Because freedom is a fragile thing.”
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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World.