Nosov N.N. “The Adventures of Dunno and His Friends” Reader’s diary, summary

Author: Nosov Nikolay Nikolaevich

Title: “The Adventures of Dunno and His Friends”

Genre: fairy tale

Theme of the work: about children

Number of pages: 340

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The main characters and their characteristics

Dunno. Doesn't like to read, doesn't know anything. Self-confident, mischievous, pugnacious, clueless.

Znayka. Smart, well-read, brave, determined. Finds a way out of any situation.

Sineglazka. Smart and kind girl, calm and fair. Knows how to forgive.

Other kids from Flower City: Pilyulkin, Tube, Vintik. Shpuntik, Guslya, Donut. Avoska, Syrupchik, Neboska, Silent, Bullet, Rasteryayka, Toropyzhka.

Residents of the Green City: Snowflake, Swallow, Kisonka, Samotsvetik, Belochka, Kubyshka.

Residents of Zmeevka: Bublik, Smekaylo, Gvozdik, Shurupchik.

Adaptations[edit]

Puppet animated series “The Adventures of Dunno and His Friends” (1972). It represents a dislocation of the brain, especially the series where Vladimir Shainsky’s song “A grasshopper sat in the grass” (“But then a frog came…”) is heard. This is already such a brain drain and a musical tripper that “a sidekick was traveling in the forge” - the most harmless thing After that it stays in my head. (And also a visual sequence of the main character’s story about his journey in a hot air balloon). The second episode, “Dunno the Musician,” consists of it a little less than completely - the song was sung for 15 minutes almost without a break, and even the voice actors inserted into the episode the phrase “How many times can you?!” This song is also repeated at the beginning of each new episode and inside some others. Bishounen is the local poet Tsvetik. Just look at those eyelashes and listen to that voice.
Otherwise, it’s a pretty good adaptation despite the strong cuts, especially towards the end (Zmeevka didn’t show up at all).

“The Game Book with Dunno” by Viktor Zaparenko, later the first part of the first “Big Game Book”. With large additions to the setting (mostly brilliant non-canon), a set of interesting children's tasks and a built-in kick-and-go board game.

Zaparenko gave some characters professions that were not stated in the canon. Donut is his cook, Toropyzhka is a chimney sweep, Avoska is a postman (Neboska is not in the adaptation), Taciturn is a shoemaker, and Dunno, you won’t believe it... is a policeman. Who wanders around all day without work and dreams of changing his profession, but changing his profession is difficult to achieve even in the canon. I could make sure that the kids don’t hurt the little ones... whenever I’m not doing this myself.

“Dunno Learns” (based on fragments of the story) 1961. In the same style as “Vintik and Shpuntik - Merry Masters” (1960)

Filmstrips “The Adventures of Dunno” and the continuation “The Air Travel of Dunno and His Comrades” 1954 and 1957, artist L. Vladimirsky.

Plot - summary

Dunno tries different activities, but does not achieve success in any of them, unpleasant events constantly happen to him and no one believes him.

The kids build a balloon and go on a trip, but the balloon breaks and the kids end up in the Green City.

Dunno declares himself in charge, meets the kids, commands the kids and takes part in harvesting fruit in the city.

When Znayka, who disappeared in the crash, returns, Dunno’s deception is revealed, and he becomes a laughing stock.

But the little girls stand up for Dunno and he decides to improve.

The kids return to their native Flower City, and Dunno begins a new life.

Tropes and cliches[edit]

The Know-Nothing Artist effect is a tropnamer. Dunno draws caricatures of his comrades, his comrades laugh at the drawings, but, as soon as they reach their portraits, they tear them up and put them on Dunno’s head.
Allusion - the behavior of Dunno in the Green City is similar to the behavior of Khlestakov in Gogol’s “The Inspector General”. Read more here.
Yes she is beautiful! - after the invitation to the ball “Gvozdik was in a clean shirt, washed and combed. - Now you are a good kid. You yourself are probably pleased to be so smart and clean.”
Magnificent vulgarity / Deliberately bad / So bad that it’s already good: Virshi of the main character. “I am a poet, my name is Dunno. From me to you - a balalaika” and “Toropyzhka was hungry, He swallowed a cold iron.” Reaction of the offended character: “I didn’t swallow any iron - neither cold nor hot!”
Poems by a poetess named Samotsvetik from Green City (there are many of them, she rivets them all in a stream, according to a single template).

In their right, Vintik and Shpuntik in Zmeevka meet a short writer named Smekaylo, who owns a sound recording device called a “bormotograph”. Smekaylo says that several times he tried to leave the chatter in the houses of short people whom he visited in order to find out what they were saying about him. However, the short ones always guess about the presence of a chatter and, to spite Smekayla, begin to make funny or unpleasant sounds, which Smekaylo is then forced to listen to. Smekailo is dissatisfied with this, but the idea that his actions are an invasion of privacy does not occur to him. And, what is most characteristic, Vintik and Shpuntik, the guys, in general, are not stupid, they don’t see anything indecent here either. When parting, Smekaylo reports that he will use the chatter in the future, but now, taught by bitter experience, he will leave it not in houses, but under the windows.

The tan is not visible - the return of shorties to the Flower City. “Znayka and his comrades were so tanned from long travels that at first no one recognized them.” There is no tan in the illustrations, everyone is easy to recognize.

Sworn friends - Dunno and Gunka. “Dunno could chat with Gunka for hours. They quarreled among themselves twenty times a day and made peace twenty times a day.” Moreover, it was because of Gunka that Dunno suddenly wanted to return home, and both were very happy to see each other again. “Gunka squealed with joy and rushed towards Dunno, and Dunno ran towards him. The friends almost collided with their foreheads and stopped in the middle of the street. Gunka looked with pride and love at his friend, who had become a famous traveler, and Dunno looked at him with a guilty smile. They stood like that for a long time, looking at each other, and from excitement they could not say a single word. Then they hugged each other tightly and tears fell from their eyes. That’s how the meeting was!”

Cool, but impractical: in the Green City they sweep the streets so clean that they even lay beautiful rugs on the sidewalks. As a result, it is impossible to walk on the sidewalks without wiping your feet (where can you wipe them on the street?) And why are there sidewalks in the city if there is only one car, from which everyone can move aside based on its sound signals?

Extra zeros. When Bublik took Vintik and Shpuntik from Zmeevka to the Green City and stayed there, and after him Shurupchik disappeared, having gone to find out what was the matter, the residents of Zmeevka began to invent stories about Baba Yaga, Koshchei, or the three-headed dragon who settled on the road. And every time one kid told another about this dragon, he added one head to it. It got to the point where the dragon became a hundred-headed dragon.

False dichotomy of choice: the situation with the rugs on the sidewalks (see a little higher). The owners ask passers-by not to walk on these rugs (why are there sidewalks at all then?) or to thoroughly wipe their feet (where can you wipe them on the street?) For some reason, no one comes up with a simple solution: by crossing from the street onto the rugs, unshoe!
And put it on again when leaving the sidewalks.

It is clear that shoes are part of the outfit, but judging by the illustrations, the attitude towards them in the Green City is a little abnormal. The kids never take off their shoes and wear the same shoes from morning to evening, on the street and at home. Maybe they even sleep in it. The attitude towards shoes is approximately the same in America and Australia, but the author was hardly familiar with this.

Boy's name: all the short ones with names starting with "-ik" are babies, and only Gem from the Green City is a baby. Why would she suddenly have such a name or such a pseudonym?

Despite the fact that ALL other names of Green City babies end with the letter “a”.

In fan fiction, sometimes Vintik's baby and girlfriend turns out to be Shpuntik. Everyone mistakes this couple for two kids due to their clothes, and the name can be bowed (in front of everyone) or not, like Samotsvetik (in private).

Microcracks in the canvas: why is Sineglazka “blue-eyed” in the 21st chapter, if in the 11th and 20th she is “blue-eyed”?

Unbridled guesses/Delight at the refrigerator: under the influence of strong positive emotions from contemplating the portrait of the heroine (and other recent events), her eyes changed color to the original color from which the name was given. And they became blue under the influence of strong negative emotions from the departure of the male half of the population from the Green City.

The musical symbol is the song “A grasshopper sat in the grass” to the words of Tsvetik (although not everyone knows that it appeared here). In one form or another it is present in most adaptations.

Named after the flower:

Poet Tsvetik. With the wick screwed on, because it's a pseudonym.

Doctor Lungwort is named after not just any flower, but a medicinal herb, so her name is also telling.

In Flower City, all the streets are named after flowers.

A daisy from Flower City and two Daisies: one from Flower City, the other from Green.

To the left around - Pulka during treatment. At first, he endured the inevitable bedridden condition with dignity; he actually had a severe dislocation of his leg. But over time, he became capricious and began to simply mock the nurses, sometimes even brandishing a crutch.

To the right around - Gvozdik from an inveterate hooligan became a diligent worker, and Dunno and Grumpy completely ceased to live up to their names.

Perhaps Gvozdyk really needed to constantly work with his hands, as he himself explained to the little ones.

Dunno also stopped hurting little children and even contributed to the complete cessation of such outrages throughout the Flower City.

On you! - at the beginning of the book, the little ones are not friends with the little ones, and Green City and Zmeevka are generally segregated by gender. This author hinted at the separate education of boys and girls during the years of writing the story.

There is also the poetess Samotsvetik, who writes poems of the same type about insects, ending with a call to either “read a book” or “sew up a dress.” This is the same caricature of the cliched works of “proletarian poets” as Lyapis-Trubetskoy and his Gavrila from Ilf and Petrov.

Same names - Both Flower City and Green City have their own Daisy. The first has a cameo role before the start of the air journey, the second - after its end (the balloon hits the ground).

The only coincidence of names in the entire setting.

Health spanking - Dunno got the full pounding for all his unbridled boasting. And after merciless teasing, as well as contemptuous remarks even from Sineglazka, he just began to behave with dignity. In particular, it was to her that he honestly admitted at the ball that he couldn’t dance at all. He didn’t dare admit that he was almost illiterate, but after returning he began to study hard and, in fact, even stopped being a know-nothing.

Renamed In Translation - in the English translation, Sineglazka became Cornflower, and Lungwort became Honeysuckle. In the case of Lungwort, the reason is in the telling name: in English the word Lungwort is not associated with honey, the translator chose the Honeysuckle flower.

I believed my own lies. It had to be invented that a piece of the Sun was falling on Earth! “I believed it myself!”

Of course, he could not know that sunlight is literally pieces of the Sun (well, very small pieces).

To cling to the achievement - when making a balloon, Dunno was of little use, but in the Green City this little guy lied to little kids the size of three boxes that without his brilliant mind no one would have been able to lift a finger, and Znayka, to whom the credit for design belonged ball, portrayed as a not very smart coward. It ended, as it happens, with exposure and bullying (however, the little ones were able to rein in the overly snide kids).

Composes the words - Dunno: “Rwaklya! This is when something is torn, and that’s what you get!” Before that, he also came up with the word “shmaklya” as a rhyme for the word “tow,” but did not figure out what it meant. However, his excuse is ironclad: he needs to come up with a rhyme, for the life of him, he doesn’t know the word “saklya” (for that would be a complete anacosmism), and “hrenaklya” (or a stronger word) from the joke that jokes about this moment in the book is for bards , not for poets. And rhymes such as “is it so” or “performances” or “tentacles” are too complex for a children's book.

I could remember the word “drop” (Tsvetik didn’t think about it either). But the rhyme is very inaccurate. But it's an anagram!

However, the concept of rhyme is just being explained to him, so he himself can only imagine an absolutely pure and simple example, and it’s too early for Tsvetik to load him with rhymes like “am I right” - they are difficult not only for a book, that is, for readers, but also intrauniversally, that is, for the hero at the moment of his training.

Technical porn - the topics of building a hot air balloon and breeding watermelons are covered.

You and you - all the kids and little ones in the Flower City speak to each other on “you”, in the Green City and Zmeevka - on “you”, and only occasionally switch to “you”.

A terrible musician - Dunno, who constantly asked for louder instruments, and when he got to the pipe (in the cartoon it turned into a tuba), he was driven out of the city. Moreover, it never dawned on him that he was a terrible musician...

The colors of an ominous rainbow - with a screwed wick. The protagonist is dressed brightly, but he is still not a villain, but simply a trickster and a sociopath who has caused a lot of headaches for his neighbors.

Bastard quote - “I am a poet, my name is Tsvetik, I say hello to you all,” as well as half-epigonism, half-plagiarism of Dunno about the balalaika - not from a book, but from a cartoon.

From there, a song about a grasshopper in the form we are familiar with: with repetition of lines modeled after A. Barto’s “Rubber Zina” or the later “Beautiful Distance” and an obsessive chorus about “imagine.” In the book, only the third and sixth lines of each of the two verses are repeated, it turns out not so sticky. And they sing it only at the end of the book, and not as a leitmotif.

Schizotech - creations of Shurupchik from the Green City, in particular, an eight-wheeled steam car with pistachio cooling. According to Shurupchik: “In the back of the machine there is a device for washing clothes. Washing can be done while driving at any speed. When at rest, that is, at stops, the machine chops wood, kneads clay and makes bricks, and also peels potatoes.”

Chauvinism in the form of sexism - in all fields and on both sides. And if the different-sex shorties from the Flower City somehow got along with each other, then in the Green City things once came to a complete break: the kids left there in full force and founded their own city - Zmeevka. Actually, the plot of the story is built to a large extent on the characters overcoming their sexist views.

Proverbs for the work

Learning is light and ignorance is darkness.

It's not a shame not to know, but a shame not to learn.

Learning without skill is not a benefit, but a disaster.

Study and work will grind everything down.

Don't brag, your back doesn't hurt.