Матрёшка
The Matryoshka
A1 · Beginner · non-fiction · 12 scenes · Premium story
A beginner's story about the doll everybody recognises and almost nobody has the history of. It opens in the middle, there is another one inside, and then another, and the last one is too small to open at all. Then where it came from: not a thousand years of folk art but a Moscow workshop in the 1890s, a Japanese doll somebody had brought home, and a village woman's name. Ends in the workshop, where every doll in the set is turned from one piece of lime and the smallest one is made first. Short present-tense sentences throughout, with the numbers, colours and sizes a beginner needs.
Characters
- The matryoshka (Матрёшка) — The doll
- The craftsman (Мастер) — Who makes it
Vocabulary from this story
- матрёшка — matryoshka
- кукла — doll
- дерево — wood
- липа — lime tree
- краска — paint
- платок — headscarf
- цветок — flower
- петух — cockerel
- середина — middle
- верх — top
- низ — bottom
- рука — hand