Beastly Crimes: Reading with the Kids

Today my five-year-old son Kirill and I finished Shchipach, part of Anna Starobinets’s Beastly Crimes series. I’d been reading it to him over the past week, before bed and at other times, and I was very curious to find out what would happen next myself. It’s a gripping story. The series also has an animated adaptation, Barsukot. Ochen zverskiy detektiv, which we really enjoyed watching with the kids. So I wanted to mention both the books and the show for anyone looking for something to read or watch together.

But Shchipach is not quite so simple. At one point, Kirill became frightened by the way the story was unfolding. I found it an absorbing detective story, while some of the twists were too unsettling for a five-year-old, and it all ended in tears because he “felt sorry for the bird.”

It’s a terrific book, and I really enjoyed reading it. But I’d recommend saving Shchipach for when the kids are a bit older.

P.S. Shchipach is book 4 in the series and has not been adapted yet; the earlier books already exist as cartoons.

#Books #ForKids #Detective #Family