The Road to Life

Frida Vigdorova, a journalist and writer, began her path as a teacher, and therefore it is not accidental that one of the main themes in her articles and books became childhood, upbringing, and pedagogical work. «The Road to Life» — this is a novella that opens a trilogy («The Road to Life», «This Is My Home», «Chernigovka») about the work in a children's home by Semyon Karabanov and his wife Gala. These books are not documentary, but they are based on real material — the pedagogical activities of the Kalabalins. Kalabalin is a student of A. S. Makarenko, the prototype of Karabanov from his book «The Pedagogical Poem». Vigdorova preserved for her hero his «literary» name.

In the novella «The Road to Life», the beginning of Karabanov's independent work in Berezovaya Polyana — a children's home for troubled children near Leningrad — is described. «Troubled» are the children who have experienced the streets, former street children — distrustful, rebellious, and hurt by life. They require attention and love. Most of the children featured in the novella are not copied from life, but «imagined» by the writer, yet they are perceived as alive.