Biography of Zhvalevsky and Evgenia Pasternak. Four months pregnant: contemporary literature for teenagers. The books have already been published by the Vremya publishing house.

“Time is Always Good” is a fascinating modern book about modern teenagers, co-written by Andrei Zhvalevsky and Evgenia Pasternak.

The main characters of this book are the girl Olya, who lives in 2018, and the boy Vitya, who lives in 1980. Modern teenagers cannot imagine their life without gadgets. They spend so much time on the Internet that they have almost forgotten how to communicate in person. Increasingly, schoolchildren communicate in chats where no one knows what their nickname is.

The life of children in 1980 is very different from the life of teenagers of the future. They have different values and different problems. They communicate a lot, spend time together, and come to the rescue.

It happens that Olya and Vitya suddenly change places. Olya, like a modern teenager, perceives this relocation as some kind of funny quest. If you fulfill all the conditions, you will return home. And at the same time you will learn so much about the past! Vitya, on the contrary, is confused. He does not know the new words that people around him speak (words that relate to gadgets and communication on the Internet), he is perplexed by the latest technological progress and the strange new generation that prefers to communicate through computers and phones rather than in person.

Soon the guys get used to the peculiarities of their new life, as they have problems. Vitya’s friend, Zhenya, treated the children to an Easter cake that their grandmother had baked. And since the boy is a pioneer, he is scolded at the meeting, since there is atheism in the USSR. Olya does not understand at all the reason for such an attitude towards Zhenya. She has no idea what dire consequences the boy’s action could entail. Olya begins to be friends with the boy and tries with all her might to help, although this does not work.

In 2018, Vita will have to deal with other difficulties. It turns out that the guys in his class don’t know how to communicate at all and simply carry on a conversation. And they have to pass oral exams. Vitya agrees to help his classmates and says that in his time there were no computers, everything was written by hand and communicated live. The boy creates a kind of club where guys come to learn to talk. Here everyone knows the nickname of another club member. It happens that someone puts on the Internet the names of all the students in the class along with nicknames, except for Vitin, and later it turns out that this was done by one girl, whom he did not even think about.

After this, Vitya and Olya change places again. The girl is worried that she was never able to help Zhenya. But the next day she meets the adult Vitya, who says that everything ended well with Zhenya.

The story tells us about eternal values - friendship, support, mutual assistance. Therefore, the time is always good - the main thing is that there are real friends nearby who are ready to help in difficult times. This is what is important always, at any time.

Picture or drawing Zhvalevsky, Pasternak - Time is always good

Biography of Zhvalevsky/Pasternak

Andrei Zhvalevsky and Evgenia Pasternak are a creative union of Belarusian writers that has existed for ten years. Both co-authors are physicists by education and live and work in Minsk.

The co-creation of Andrei Zhvalevsky and Evgenia Pasternak began in 2004 with a series of ironic love novels “M+F”, which were republished several times, and also became the basis for a film of the same name, shot by “Central Partnership” (starring Nelly Uvarova and Grigory Antipenko). Other stories of this genre also found their readers: “I deserve more,” “About carrots,” “Like a cat and a dog.”

However, real success came to the co-authors when they started writing books for children and teenagers: “The True Story of Santa Claus”, “Time is Always Good”, “Gymnasium No. 13”, “Moskvest”, “Shakespeare Never Dreamed of”, “I Want to school”, “Death to Dead Souls”, “February 52”, “Hunting the Basilisk”, “Let’s run away from here”. All these books arouse constant interest among readers and publishers and have been awarded numerous awards. The rights to the translation of “Time is Always Good” were purchased by the Italian publishing house “Giunti”, negotiations are underway on a film adaptation of this story.

Writers from Belarus Andrei Zhvalevsky and Evgenia Pasternak are perhaps the most famous authors of books for teenagers today. Their works instantly become popular, no matter what they write - a New Year's fairy tale, a story about time travel, or stories about ordinary schoolchildren.

Andrey Zhvalevsky graduated from the Faculty of Physics of the Belarusian State University. He wrote his first book in 2002 together with Igor Mytko. It was a parody of "Harry Potter" - "Porry Gutter and the Stone Philosopher". Then the co-authors wrote an ironic horror novel, No Harm Will Come to You Here, which won the National Children's Dream Award in the Funniest Book category.

Evgenia. We met at the physics department of BSU. I just entered, Andrey was already an adult fourth-year student. And for many years we were in the same team - first in STEM (student theater), then we played in KVN...

Andrey. And then I started writing books and got Evgenia involved in this business. I always say that my main contribution to literature is Evgenia Pasternak!

Evgenia. We go to a cafe and come up with an idea for a book. We write down the main plot lines on a piece of paper begged from the waiter. It is important. And then we go home and write, continuing each other. When the muse “freezes,” we meet again, adjust, and think about it. In the end, it can be very funny to find that very first leaf and compare it with what happened.

But you wrote your first joint novel in roles: on behalf of the girl - Evgeniy, and on behalf of the young man - Andrey. Why did you abandon this practice later?

Evgenia.We didn't refuse. "Time Is Always a Good Time" is written by role. And in the collection of stories “Shakespeare Never Dreamed of!” There are also pieces written “for a girl” and “for a boy.” This is an interesting technique, it allows you to show a three-dimensional picture. But it’s not interesting to write like that all the time.

Writer Stas Vostokov about the story “Time is Always Good”:

Andrei Zhvalevsky and Evgenia Pasternak answer the question of how the idea for the story “Time is Always Good” was born:

Andrey. Zhenya came up with a story, but it would be nice to look at our childhood through the eyes of her eldest daughter.

Evgenia. I told Sashka for a long time, and then I thought: it would be cool to write how she got into my childhood and what she would do there with her independence of judgment and character...We distributed the book to my daughter's classmates and they liked it. But they felt terribly sorry for the children of the 80s: how did you live there, without mobile phones, computers, televisions?

About the story "Moskvest":

In the Universal Library of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research named after. DI. Blokhintsev held meetings with the authors of popular books for children and teenagers, Andrei Zhvalevsky and Evgenia Pasternak. This event was timed to coincide with the anniversary of the Institute and Children's Book Week. Authors from Belarus, who visited Dubna for the first time, enjoyed talking with young readers, their parents and teachers - fans of books that have become real bestsellers.

The day when the meeting with the writers was scheduled at the library was full of important city events. It was all the more pleasant to see how children flocked to Blokhinka, carrying with them whole bags of books in the hope of getting autographs from the authors.

The Long Path to Literature

The creative union of Andrei Zhvalevsky and Evgenia Pasternak was born in 2004, although the history of their acquaintance is more than a quarter of a century. They both studied at the physics department of the Belarusian State University in Minsk, Andrey was three years older. We met at the student theater: both were members of the organizing committee for the preparation of “Physics Days”, and then played together in KVN.

After graduating from university in 1992, Andrei managed to work in his profession for a year and a half: he was engaged in scientific work, actively published, and began writing a dissertation. It was with great regret that I had to part with science: a daughter was born, and I had to feed my family. I followed a long path to literature - first I worked in the design of valuable security papers, journalism, then worked in a publishing house. Getting acquainted with the works of young authors, I realized that I myself could write no worse. The first book written together with Igor Mytko was a parody of Harry Potter - “Porry Gutter and the Stone Philosopher”, then the ironic horror novel “No Harm Will Come to You Here”, which won a national children's award. Since 2005, Zhvalevsky has been a member of a group of screenwriters that writes scripts for television series, including “Soldiers”, “Cop in Law” and others.

Creative Union of A. Zhvalevsky and E. Pasternak

Having parted ways with his co-author, Andrei decided to involve Evgenia in literature, with whom they continued to be family friends. Her tutorial on how to use a computer, “Computer for Women,” instantly became popular. The joint work of the authors began with a series of ironic love novels “M+F”, which became the basis of the famous film of the same name. The text was written for the man by Andrey, and by Evgenia for the woman. Then there was a women's novel “About carrots”. But the books written for children and teenagers became truly famous: “Time is Always Good”, “Gymnasium No. 13”, “The True Story of Santa Claus”, “I Want to Go to School”, “Moskvest”, “February 52”, “Hunting for Basilisk”, “Death to Dead Souls”, “Shakespeare Never Dreamed of” and others. Their works have repeatedly become winners of reading competitions, laureates and finalists of the Cherished Dream, Kniguru, Scarlet Sails, Alice awards, and the. Krapivina, Start Up and many others.

Inspiration from your own children

Andrey jokes that his main contribution to literature is Evgenia Pasternak! They draw inspiration primarily from their own children, of whom there are five in two families: the eldest is 25 years old, the youngest is 4 years old. Books that children literally read are no less interesting for adults; moreover, they become a kind of “bridge of mutual understanding” between children and parents. And it is not surprising: many plots were born on the basis of everyday stories, and children, their friends and acquaintances, school teachers, pets and even those people with whom they met during creative meetings became bright and recognizable characters. Each book reveals current issues that concern modern teenagers, which they do not always dare to discuss not only with adults, but sometimes with their peers: first love, relationships with friends, drugs, adaptation in a team, difficulties with studies.

History of the creation of books

At the meeting in Blokhinka, the authors shared several stories of writing books. For example, “Time is Always Good” is a story about how a boy and a girl from 1980 and 2018 switched times. The idea for the book arose one evening when Evgenia’s eldest daughter Sasha, looking into the refrigerator and not finding yogurt there, announced that there was nothing to eat! At the same time, I was incredibly surprised to learn that my mother tried yogurt for the first time in her first year at university. The conversation dragged on: her daughter listened with pleasure to her memories of childhood, in which there were not many things familiar to today's teenagers - computers, gadgets, mobile phones. But in the courtyards everyone enjoyed playing various outdoor games. After making sure that children were really interested in hearing about how they used to live in the Soviet Union, the co-authors decided to write a book in the fantasy genre. Considering that this was in 2008, they were able to guess a lot by looking into the future.

The book “I want to go to school” was born from the title. The authors wanted to come up with such a wonderful school, where children run in the morning with one thought: “I wish I could hurry!” It does not contain the usual “subjects” and “parallels”, but there are many projects implemented by like-minded people, in which the most cherished dreams come true - from a hot air balloon flight to a trip to Elbrus. After the release of the book, the authors were flooded with questions: where is this school located? Moreover, the book turned out to be not entirely science fiction: it turned out that there are few such schools, but they do exist.

Andrei and Evgenia admit that they remember well themselves at school age, they understand what a teenager is offended by, what is interesting to him, and what is boring. These things are universal for different times. Zhenya, for example, developed very difficult relationships in the class: among teenagers, those who differ from the general mass are not accepted. However, this only strengthened her character. And when she moved to another physics and mathematics class, she realized that learning is a real drive!

Book plots give birth to life

Just as themes could grow from anything, so the plots of books were born from life itself. To stimulate interest in learning, they wrote a quest book, the answers to the questions of which could be found as part of the school curriculum. There were also completely detective stories. And once the authors held a competition among schoolchildren, inviting them to write a sequel to a famous literary work. More than 1,000 exciting stories arrived, from which it was difficult to select the best ones for publication.

How to write a book together

To the question “How can you write a book together?” The authors said that they practice several methods. Sometimes this is a “ping-pong” method: one writes part of the text, sends it by mail to the second, who continues and returns it to the first, and so on. Sometimes they work like this, being next to each other and discussing the development of the plot - for example, on a train: this is how the first three parts of the recently published book “Open Ending” were written. They also work well together in a cafe, where they wait for Evgenia’s youngest daughter while she is practicing figure skating. The second method is when everyone writes the role of their hero, and then they compose a single text. This is how “Time is Always Good”, “M+F”, and some stories were written.

“Women usually think much more actively: even when they meet in their thoughts, in a few seconds they manage to get married, have children, get divorced, giving up the best years of their lives. During this time, a man sometimes doesn’t even have time to evaluate his appearance,” jokes Andrey. And Evgenia notes: “A man should always remain a man, and a woman – a woman. The initiative belongs to the man. It's like dancing. A couple succeeds only when the partner leads, but does it in a way that is convenient for the woman.”

Authors always draw up a plan for writing a book, identify characters, outline the development of the plot, it is constantly being adjusted and refined. At the end of the work, the authors post the manuscript in the VKontakte group for a “test reading”, carefully listening to the opinions of their readers, they refine the images, make amendments, and only after that the final version of the book is born.

Meetings with readers

Meetings with the reading public are always a breeze, fun and interesting. Writers consider themselves, in a certain sense, conversational artists. Sometimes you have to literally awaken children's interest in books. In one of the St. Petersburg gymnasiums, children, as it turned out, did not even open other books besides textbooks. I just had to read them excerpts from my works - they came to life and became interested. And across the road is another gymnasium, where the meeting went off with a bang. It all depends on the teachers, the authors believe: in an ordinary school in a provincial town there can be much more enthusiastic children than in the “coolest” private school or gymnasium.

Andrey admitted that, in his personal impressions, schoolchildren still read more, especially at a younger age. It feels like parents are becoming more involved with their children. And recently, having studied publishing programs, I discovered that four times more children's books are published than adult ones. Andrey also said that there is no competition among children’s writers, the relationships are very warm and friendly.

After the meeting with young readers, there was a conversation with adults - parents and teachers - about modern children's and teenage literature, how to get children interested in reading, about time and about themselves, and many other issues that concern every person. But it is not customary for writers to talk about a book that is currently being written, so fans of the work of Andrei Zhvalevsky and Evgenia Pasternak can only look forward to meeting new books that will soon come out from their pens.

Evgenia STEIN

Photo from the writers’ personal archive

Biography of Zhvalevsky and Evgenia Pasternak. Four months pregnant: contemporary literature for teenagers. The books have already been published by the Vremya publishing house.

Picture or drawing Zhvalevsky, Pasternak - Time is always good

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Biography of Zhvalevsky/Pasternak