Korney Chukovsky

Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky was one of the most popular children's poets in the Russian language. His catchy rhythms, inventive rhymes and absurd characters have invited comparisons with the American children's author Dr. Seuss. Chukovsky's poems Tarakanische, Krokodil ("Crocodile"), Telefon, and Moydodyr ("Wash-'em-Clean") have been favorites with many generations of Russophone children. Lines from his poems, in particular Telefon, have become universal catch-phrases in the Russian media and everyday conversation. He adapted the Doctor Dolittle stories into a book-length Russian poem as Doctor Aybolit, and translated a substantial portion of the Mother Goose canon into Russian as Angliyskiye Narodnyye Pesenki. He also wrote very popular translations of Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, O. Henry, and other authors, and was an influential literary critic and essayist.