The Adventures of Plump Liza and Other Tales

What a disappointment it was for cat Liza to meet the aggressive mice! After all, she left her owner — pastry chef Krema — for them and set off on a dangerous journey. Could she have acted otherwise? Real cats... always catch a couple of mice for lunch. However, these gray creatures nearly ate Liza herself! After all, she smelled so deliciously of cinnamon. And it's no wonder — the cat was baked from dough. This was PLUMP Liza. After reading this book, young readers will not only learn about Liza's adventures but also meet the heroes of other tales by Viktor Lunin: the sad cloud and the illiterate little elephant, the brave hedgehog, and the giraffe who wanted so badly to play hide and seek... And also — by carefully studying the recipe, one can bake a cat from dough themselves (or with mom)... Or an elephant and a calf? A hedgehog and a fox? A cloud and a little boat?.. Whatever you wish! You just need to let your imagination run wild. A little preface Ever since childhood, I wanted to have a dog, a cat, or at least a turtle at home. But my parents didn't allow it. I remember a cute little cat came to our dacha one time. So clean, gray, with clear blue eyes. It kept walking around me and rubbing against my legs. But when the cat decided to go into the house with me, my mom pushed it away and shouted that the cat was surely contagious and didn’t belong in the house. No matter how much I objected, no matter how much I cried, it was all in vain. You can't argue with mom. And the cat understood everything at once, looked at us reproachfully, and left to never return. That little cat touched my soul. And years later, I began writing a fairy tale for my little daughter, where the main character was indeed a cat. I wrote for a long time. For a whole eleven months. I brought it to the publishing house, and they said, “We published a story about cats three years ago. Enough. We don’t need more.” But I wasn’t very upset. Because I saw myself: it was too early to publish the story; something was lacking in it. The tale lay in the drawer for ten years. I only finished it when our family got a cat named Marsik, a handsome ginger fellow with a snowy white bib on his chest, white socks on his paws, and greenish gooseberries for eyes. He would leap to the top of the bookshelf in an instant, knocking everything off the path to the floor. He also tried to type with me on the typewriter and learned to wake me up at night by turning on the light with his paw when he wanted to eat. I observed all his movements, all his tricks and habits, and endowed the characters of the story, Liza and Valeryan, with them. And only then did the story finally come to life. In this book, you will read not only the tale itself but also the songs of all its main characters.