Burdebach the Shoe Dweller

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the forest in a leather boot” Has a fluffy little guy wearing weird clothes ever tried to convince you that it’s absolutely OK? You haven’t? This means that a more cautious Burdebach hunted in your house than the one that came in Nikita’s room. Those Burdubaches are weird guys. They know how to conjure, but not very well. So sometimes their activities end in a very odd way. And they are crazy about pick up what they come across under people’s beds: sneakers, scarves, dolls…
So Nikita, a young boy we are going to talk about, got into trouble due to the Burdebach’s witchcraft. On the other hand, though, shrinking to the size of a Lego doll opens up some pretty promising avenues for adventure. For example, a lizard becomes a much more reliable transportation means than a horse. And in the forest outside the city you can find not only a squirrel, but also a mermaid singer or a creature called ‘nyavka’, capable of sucking all the energy from your body with just a light touch of their lips. Well, if you are lucky, you can come across crystal palace in which Water Man lives.

The book has 34 author’s manual illustrations.

Publisher about the book:
Elena Lan, a well-known Ukrainian writer, has created a complex, multi-level world that lives according to fairy tale and logical laws. She has populated the world with Slavic mythology characters. Nikita’s adventures are built on the principles of modern fantasy. To get back to his home world, Nikita goes through a series of tests accompanied by extraordinary magical characters, who, however, behave in a modern and even pragmatic way. His own efforts gradually turn into a battle to save the magical forest, the last refuge of the mythological creatures.

Author about the book:
The idea to write a book based on Slavic demonology came to me several years ago. It was when I red the book Ukrainians: Superstitions, Beliefs, Demonology. I was extremely surprised at how little we knew about the way our ancestors had perceived the world around us. Their forests, rivers, lakes and homes were inhabited by numerous mythical creatures. Each Ukrainian region had its own ‘wild’ and ‘domestic’ spirits — but we, the contemporaries, had no idea about all that.
‘Is it normal?’, I asked myself. Modern children will easily tell you what a Greek satyr looked like, but they can’t describe Bld, Mamuna, or Nyavka.