Talking about coincidences, just the other day my sister was telling me how she tried to buy an encyclopedia for my niece Klubnikis and discovered that book encyclopedias are becoming extinct. Everything is going digital now, but who needs a digital encyclopedia when there is Google? Besides, she wants to introduce the kid to actual books, not to computers.
I agreed with her it was a shame and said that there used to be an entire profession where people would visit houses and sell encyclopedias.
And what do you think? Today I came to The Hedgehogs to assemble some furniture and had a visit from a real encyclopedia-peddler, a kid from Latvia, here on an exchange visit. We had a nice anti-Russian chat and I bought a set of beautiful encyclopedias for Klubnikis.
It’s great to know that encyclopedia-peddlers are not a thing of the past.
Clarissa's Blog 
In which language?
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We are not yet at a stage where a bloke could hope to make any money selling encyclopedias in Latvian in Southern Illinois. 🙂 So of course they are in English.
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I guess the question was in which language you had the anti-Russian chat… 🙂
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“I guess the question was in which language you had the anti-Russian chat”
– The guy’s maybe 18, at most, and his name is Jurgis. These kids don’t have a good Russian.
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“I guess the question was in which language you had the anti-Russian chat…”
I’m curious too. I had three young Latvian students a few years ago, one was basically trilingual in Latvian-Russian-Latgalian, one said she was functional (not fluent) in Russian and the last essentially didn’t know Russian at all.
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He said he knew some Russian but he’s here to advance his studies as the future English teacher, so we just spoke in English. The guy speaks some German and Spanish, too. Baltics rule! I’d never find a kid like that in all of Ukraine, that’s for sure.
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Will Klubnikis be able to read also in Russian, or only in English?
In my childhood I loved the tomes of encyclopedia dealing with animals and (including history of) medicine, could look at the pictures for a long time too. Now too would’ve enjoy to look at this colorful, full of photographs book, for instance:
“Wonders of Life: Exploring the Most Extraordinary Phenomenon in the Universe” by Brian Cox
In Russian Юрий Дмитриев – Соседи по планете series are wonderful. The language is conversational, suitable for kids and he has a gift of presenting topics in an interesting manner.
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I have a feeling she will start reading Russian first because her grandmother is a teacher and very active. 🙂
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