The Old Man and the Sea - the 65th anniversary

This afternoon the Window on America center in Dnipro was visited by a mixed group of NMetUA students and NMetAU teachers (Myrgorodska Oleksandra and Pavlienko Anna). 

This group has been studying English through the great writing by E. Hemingway, which brought his author the Nobel Prize. It is The Old Man and the Sea. In the course of studies, the students a bi-lingual (English and Ukrainian) edition of The Old Man and the Sea. This very edition allows reading the original and comparing the professional translation with the own decisions. The translation was made in1974 by Volodymyr Mitrofanov and published by Dnipro Publishers (Kyiv) in 1991 with wonderful illustrations by a Ukrainian artist Mykola Pshinka.
We briefly looked through E. Hemingway’s milestone facts with the presentation of the WOA and watched the beautiful cartoon film, a screen version of The Old Man and the Sea by E. Hemingway. We discussed the themes touched in the novel: the teacher and the student, the life and the death, relations between the generations. We even tried to act as the actors and played the dialogue as if we were shooting a new screen version of the novel. The students had a good opportunity to exchange the ideas about the novel with Mr. Jason, an American volunteer who also decided to participate in the class. 

We continue working with the novel. What did the fisherman do with the marlin’s head? Why did everything in the old man’s house was old and dirty though he was strong enough to do the jobs around the house?
Participants number – 6 person.

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“The Last of Mohicans” celebrates the 25th Anniversary !

The project Discover USA continues. This afternoon a group of the 7th year students from school # 141 visited the Window on America center in Dnipro. The school is WOA’s longtime partner as its focused on the English language study.
The WOA staff member T. Gavryliuk familiarized the group with the life and work of James Fenimore Cooper. Cooper is considered to be the first national writer in the USA. He was one of the first major American novelists to include Native American characters in his works. Native Americans play central roles in his “Leatherstocking Tales”. However, his treatment of this group is complex and highlights the tenuous relationship between frontier settlers and American Indians. In the presentation we focused on the novel “The Last of the Mohicans”. It depicts the iconic character Chingachgook, the last chief of the Mohicans. He is portrayed as noble, courageous, and heroic.
The Cooper’s works from the DOUNB Library collection were presented as well as the video from the WOA’s video collection – “The Last of Mohicans” (1992) film.
Participants number – 11 (10 students + 1 teacher).

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Timothy Sneider "Bloodlands

The Dnipropetrovsk WOA's grateful patron Helen congratulates the WOA staff with the Ukrainian Libraries' Day.
The gift  Mrs. Helen selected has a special value – it's a copy of the book by the US historian
Timothy Sneider "Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin". The resentation of the book at the America House in Kyiv impressed her greatly.
The WOA staff was pleasantly surprised with such meaningful gift and will circulate the book among the patrons interested in modern history.

One Book Display

To commemorate Taras Shevchenko’s 200th Anniversary the WOA Dnipropetrovsk presented a bilingual edition (in Ukrainian and English): “Taras Shevchenko. Selected poems. Paintings. Graphic Works” by “Mystetstvo” Publishers (Kyiv, 2007) – 608 p.

Shevchenko’s poetry and paintings has long been the world culture heritage. His poems are translated into many languages, but most of all – into Russian, English, German, Hungarian, Belarusian, Spanish.

The displayed edition presents the English translations by Ms. Vera Rich.

Vera Rich (1936–2009) was a British poet, journalist, historian, and translator from Belarusian and Ukrainian. Her translations of Taras Shevchenko’s works were commissioned for the century of his death (1961) and received excellent reviews, both in the West and in the Soviet Ukraine. For this work, Vera Rich was awarded an Honorary Diploma in Shevchenko Studies by the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences.

The poetry is illustrated with reproductions of the best paintings and graphic works. They successfully reveal the diversity of Taras Shevchenko’s talent – both poetic and artistic.
In the preface to the edition academician Ivan Dziuba (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine ) describes the main stages of Shevchenko’s life and career .The preface allows the foreign readers to understand why the poet received from the Ukrainian nation the title “Kobzar” – a bard, a professional poet in Ukrainian. His original book of poems with the same title became a bestseller soon after publishing.