When the Animals Could Talk

As with every book I've bought from Teach Me Ukrainian, this is another great choice for learners looking to build vocabulary, understand sentence structure and most importantly, grasp context. Beyond grammar and vocabulary, reading Franko gives us a direct connection to foundational Ukrainian folklore, shared cultural references and traditional satire.

Ukrainian is a language with quite a few surprises. Grammar cases that pretend to be another when it’s about living creatures. Letter arithmetic. Flexible word orders. A richness of verbs to express action, and then another verb for its completion. Children’s books don’t stay away from this either. So, I’m incredibly grateful for booklets like these, that welcome foreigners to this beautiful language and enjoy its rich stories. These booklets simplify grammar and have translations for many words you may not know, balancing effort and learning with what you need to know to enjoy the story. Highly recommend giving them a try.

I am such of a huge fan of these graded readers! When I learn a language, I always want to start reading as fast as possible, but there’s that awkward point where one's vocabulary isn’t developed enough to read native content without hours of tedious dictionary work. And, let’s face it, Ukrainian is … particularly challenging. These books are the perfect solution to help a learner bridge that gap. They’re real books, drawn from Ukrainian literature, thoughtfully adapted, culturally rooted, and beautifully produced. Anyone who’s learning Ukrainian owes it to themselves to buy and read them all, which I plan to do! Solomiia and the other scholars working on them are doing a real service to the Ukrainian language and to students of this beautiful language!