Lois Lenski Children's Literature Lecture March 23

Marina Balina of Illinois Wesleyan University, will present the annual Lois Lenski Children's Literature Lecture at 7 p.m. Monday, March 23, in Schroeder Hall room 130 at Illinois State University.  

The lecture is free and open to the public.

Balina, the Isaac Funk Professor of Russian Studies at IWU who recently co-edited "Russian Children's Literature and Culture," will speak on "Pinocchio's Adventures in the Soviet Wonderland: Contexts and Challenges of Soviet Children's Literature."

A native of Russia who earned her doctorate at Leningrad State University (now St. Petersburg), Balina joined Illinois Wesleyan's faculty in 1989 and is a member of the University's Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures.  She is a prolific author who has published more than 30 articles and five books in three languages -- Russian, German and English -- and her work had been translated in French and Italian.