The latest Ukrainian item of the month is a children’s book that came to the University Library under the Legal Deposit scheme and which was passed to me for cataloguing,

Podoroz︠h︡ miz︠h︡ kraïnamy z misterom Korhi (A journey between countries with Mister Korhi) is a book written to help Ukrainian refugee children acclimatise to life in the United Kingdom.  Mister Korhi is a corgi, who helps the reader learn about their new host country while helping them celebrate their home country by telling him all about it.

It’s a terribly sweet book, gently getting its readers interested in all four parts of the UK (each country has an interesting facts page dedicated to it).  There are also sections for the reader to fill in, so that Mister Korhi gets to know them and their own country better.

The book is specifically designed to help children psychologically.  In the lower right-hand section here, the reader is invited to write down specific memories of home.  The text that follows says, “When we are far from home, memories like these can be happy, and sad.  All the feelings you have about it are normal.  Remembering and recalling is one of the most valuable things to do.  So don’t give up on it, woof.”

There is also a section at the end for parents and others caring for the children using the book, with some general practical advice about life in the UK and most specific advice about how to help their children adapt while keeping hold of their memories of home.

It is always interesting to see the new Legal Deposit material that is passed to me – generally in the Cyrillic or Greek alphabets – through a fairly new workflow that tries to prevent such books going to the Library Storage Facility without an acceptable record since batch processes to improve records for other Legal Deposit material are unlikely to help them.  In the same batch as Mister Korhi were four Russian books (1 about caring for animals for young children, 3 sci-fi ones for older children) and 2 Greek poetry books, all still to be tackled.

Mel Bach