Our Children, Our Fairy Tales

Elvira Egrajeva
Head of Education, City of Tula, Russia

Respected members of the Albany Tula Alliance, residents of Albany, and especially school children of Albany!

A huge distance separates the cities of Albany and Tula, but our cooperation and our passion to know as much as possible about the life and culture of one another brings us closer together.

We in Tula felt deeply grateful towards the citizens of Albany, when we found out about the great interest your schoolchildren had for Russian culture, Russian people and her creative treasures! It is wonderful that American children are interested in Russian fairy tales.

Our children also, when they read these fairy tales, have thoughts of kindness and beauty. These fairy tales open the world of dreams, they help us to understand kindness, to see what love is, help us to learn to trust. Having entered the magic world of fairy tales, school children come to the conclusion that evil will not prevail in life, that kindness is stronger than all and will always win.

Fairy tales give children the opportunity to learn the most important lessons of life in an entertaining and poetic form.

Fairy tales always have a happy ending. But to reach this happy end, the characters must always undertake many great tasks by themselves, believing in their own will, strength of soul, and never losing faith, hope, love or wisdom – only then does happiness come. Such is the moral wisdom of fairy tales.

"Repositories of wisdom and beauty"—this is how Russian people refer to fairy tales, even more so because they give the opportunity to enjoy the beauty of our native Russian language, to revisit the creative and fantastical days of childhood.

Children around the world learn their first lessons of beauty and wisdom from the fairy tales of their own people. In the schools of our cities children learn not only Russian fairy tales, but also with the fairy tales of other peoples around the world, and of course with American fairy tales.

In the Year 2001 we have decided to hold a contest of children’s paintings of American fairy tales. Then we can exchange the creative works of the children of our two cities. This would be yet another step in the strengthening of the friendship of peoples, and the cooperation between our two cities.