Since June 10, the sale, import, and distribution of the children's book "The Wonderful Adventure of Nils with the Wild Geese" by Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf has been banned in Belarus. However, the concerns of the regulatory authorities are not related to the content of the famous tale, but to the peculiarities of the book's design.
A literary and artistic publication for younger school-age children, released under the trademark "Umka," has been banned. It turned out that the book does not meet the requirements of the technical regulations of the Customs Union, which establish standards for the design of children's printed products.
What exactly did the inspectors find unsatisfactory?
According to current rules, in books and magazines for preschoolers and younger schoolchildren, the distance between words must correspond to the size of the font used.
In the inspected publication, the font size was 4.51 millimeters, while the spaces between words were significantly smaller — from 1.60 to 2.50 millimeters. According to specialists, such formatting may hinder children's reading and comprehension of the text.
This violation became the basis for including the book in the list of products banned for sale in Belarus.
Not the first ban for the publisher
This is not the first time that Belarusian regulatory authorities have raised concerns about children's books under the "Umka" brand due to non-compliance with text formatting requirements.
Previously, for similar reasons, the following works were banned:
- "The Wizard of the Emerald City" by Alexander Volkov;
- "Mowgli" by Rudyard Kipling;
- "The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors" by Vitaly Gubarev;
- "Urfin Djus and His Wooden Soldiers" by Alexander Volkov;
- "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll;
- "The Golden Key, or The Adventures of Buratino" by Alexei Tolstoy.
In all cases, the complaints were not about the content of the works, but about the non-compliance of font parameters and inter-word spacing with the technical regulations.
The ban on the book about Nils and the wild geese is solely related to the printing characteristics of this particular edition. Meanwhile, the list of banned children's books in Belarus continues to grow with works of world and domestic classics if their design does not meet the established standards for children's literature.
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