1/2Photo: Channel OnePhoto:Personal archive of the Pliev familyNikol Plieva, 6 years old, Moscow. The girl knows more than 100 poems by heart. On the show, the stars told her the names of poets, and Nicole read excerpts from their works. She coped with all the tasks. Her mother Zalina says: - I started reading poetry to my daughter early, because I love them myself. We started with Pushkin, then there were periods of Krylov, Nekrasov, Tyutchev, then Mandelstam and Gumilev. Her latest love for about six months now is Brodsky. Now they call me and ask: "How many poems do you learn a day?" But we don't learn them, Nicole memorizes them by ear and knows more than a hundred. When she was three and a half years old, we went to a children's recitation competition as spectators. And then Nicole caught fire, said that she also wanted to participate. I went to the organizers, asked if she could perform outside the competition. At first they doubted, because Nicole was the smallest, but they allowed it. She went out, read the fable "The Elephant and the Pug", for which she received the audience sympathy prize. From that day on, competitions began. At the age of four, she was awarded in the State Duma for reading Yesenin's poems about Russia. At the age of five, she read "The Secret Becomes Clear" by Viktor Dragunsky at the Provincial Theater of Sergei Bezrukov and won the Grand Prix. This spring, she won the Russian Cup for artistic creativity "Assembly of Arts" among children from 5 to 12 years old. But this does not mean that Nicole's whole life consists of poetry. She goes to kindergarten, does ballet, goes to a children's style academy, draws well, sings, participates in fashion shows, has already starred in advertising. She has many hobbies. And poetry is simply what she loves. It seems to me that they are close to her, because Nicole has a good ear. For example, she doesn't like the sound of Korney Chukovsky at all, she always cried when I read it to her. Nicole chooses poems where she feels the musical rhythm, the melody that is pleasant to her. We don't have a day without a bedtime story or a poem. My daughter falls asleep to my voice or an audiobook. I don't try to control the child, I just help her develop. Today she wants to be a doctor like her mother, dance Odetta at the Bolshoi Theater, and recently, when asked what she dreams of becoming, she answered: a pancake taster.
1/2Photo: personal archive of the Shmargun familyPhoto:Personal archive of the Shmargun familyLev Shmargun, 5 years old, Saskatoon, Canada. On the show, the boy decorated a three-tier cake with cream roses himself. His father Igor says: - Lev often visited me at work in the pastry shop, watched how I cooked, covered cakes with mastic (a material made of powdered sugar. - Ed. "Antenna"), made decorations, and one day he wanted to try it himself. My son liked making figurines. Now he can make different compositions from mastic himself, paint cakes with a special airbrush, decorate with roses from cream using a pastry bag. He showed this on the air of the show. It is too early to judge what profession Lev will choose. Now he says that he wants to make cakes. But I think he is at that age when every child dreams of being like his dad, so he looks up to me. However, Lev generally loves to cook and even clean the kitchen. He enjoys helping his mother at home, and he even has a signature dish – spaghetti with salmon under Roquefort sauce and Parmesan cheese. Two years ago, our family moved from Ukraine to Canada, so Lev speaks three languages by the age of five: Ukrainian, Russian and English. Now he goes to the preparatory class of a French school, where he is learning a fourth language, and next year he will become a first-grader. Naturally, in addition to cooking, he has other hobbies: he has been swimming and doing karate for two years now.
