A is for Army: War Alphabet Books at Princeton’s Cotsen Children’s Library

3 April 2026 by Ekaterina Shatalova

In March 2026, Ekaterina Shatalova spent four weeks as a visiting researcher in the Special Collections of the Cotsen Children’s Library, Princeton University, on a research stay funded by the Friends of the Princeton University Library.

The visit supported a chapter of her PhD dissertation, provisionally titled Imagined Weapons: War Narratives in Russian Children's and Young Adult Literature, 2014–Present, which examines how war is represented and concealed in contemporary Russian children’s literature. The chapter focuses on war-themed alphabet books, a genre that has experienced a striking revival in both Russia and Ukraine since 2014. Studying Cotsen’s holdings of historical war-related children’s print culture was essential for establishing the comparative and genealogical framework within which contemporary patriotic ABCs can be situated.