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Simple for kids


‎Super Simple - Kids Songs on the App Store

Description

Super Simple makes learning fun and simple with kids songs, shows and toddler games! Used in homes and classrooms all over the world, our educational songs and shows for preschool kids are some of the most trusted and beloved on the internet. All the favorite Super Simple Songs, nursery rhymes and shows for kids & toddlers from the YouTube channel like Baby Shark, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Old MacDonald, the ABC alphabet song, and much more educational and entertaining content will help your little ones with Early Learning.

SUBSCRIBE TO SUPER SIMPLE!

• Great for preschoolers learning English!
• New kids safe, trusted educational songs, nursery rhymes, shows and learning games added each week!
• There are no ads!
• Create your own custom playlists with your favorite nursery rhymes and singalongs
• We’ve got games! Play music games for toddlers and kids like educational ABC games featuring your favorite Super Simple characters.
• Watch all our kids songs from YouTube including classics like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Wheels On The Bus, This Is The Way, and Baby Shark!
• Watch episodes from your favorite Super Simple shows like Carl's Car Wash, The Bumble Nums, Caitie’s Classroom, and Finny The Shark.
• Early learning about animals, language & gestures, counting, ABCs and more!
• See our new content here first!
• Take Super Simple Songs on the go! The app automatically saves your most-watched videos to your device so your kids can keep learning while traveling or when they have to wait.
• Navigating Super Simple - Kids Songs is easy for little ones. They’ll have fun exploring and finding all their favorite content.

We started as teachers using music and dance in our classroom, and we're proud to be able to continue that tradition with this fun, ad-free app.

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To access all the content you may purchase an auto-renewing subscription through the Super Simple App:

• We offer you a 7-day free trial upon selection of the subscription.
• Your subscription will be charged to your iTunes account at confirmation of purchase and will automatically renew (at the duration selected) unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24 hours before the end of the current period.
• Current subscription may not be canceled during the active subscription period; however, you can manage your subscription and/or turn off auto-renewal by visiting your iTunes Account Settings after purchase

Read our terms of service and privacy policy:

https://supersimple.com/app-terms-of-service-in-app/
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Version 1.9.1

• Updates to games & storybooks.
• Changed parental gate to a math problem.
• Added a setting to keep the operating system from deleting downloaded data.
• Fixed a problem related to submitting support requests through the app.
• Minor changes in settings.

Ratings and Reviews

1.6K Ratings

This is Grammy’s GEM!

A first time grandmother, but mother of two went looking for entertaining and educational videos and struck gold when I found Super Simple Songs! My grandson is frozen in his tracks watching and learning about washing, sitting on the potty, animal sounds, colors, shapes…..you name it! I love what you do! Our grandson is just over a year old and has been watching this for months with me. He now clearly identifies with so many of the songs and claps along or holds up his one little finger! We sing these even when not watching and I often catch myself singing when on walks with him or driving my car, which is NOT a bad thing. More than that I appreciate the new shows that are sometimes the same songs with different visuals. He especially loves Little Snowflake, Goodnight to You, and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Thank you for not only bringing us children’s songs that aren’t annoying, but also for adding your own twist to the music, making it very enjoyable for ALL OF US! Kudos and keep up the good work!

Thank you for your wonderful review! We're really glad to hear that your grandson is enjoying the app (and that you are too!). We know kids tend to watch and listen to the same things repeatedly (it's how they learn), so we always try to make sure that the parents and grandparents won't mind hearing them over and over (and over!). Thanks again!

Our family’s favorite.

I love Super Simple Songs! It’s obvious that the people behind this series understand and care about little ones. The characters are cute and well animated unlike some of that creepy cheap 3D stuff that’s out there. I don’t mind the songs in my head like some other kids shows (and they’re ALWAYS in my head). The best part is that once my son learns a song it’s something engaging to do without a screen too - we love to do One Little Finger together! The app itself is just 🤌, smooth and intuitive. I think some other reviewers forget it’s designed to be navigated by toddlers who can’t read/type.

Thank you for your kind review Samantha! We're so happy to hear that Super Simple is a hit in your household and that you like the app. It's also good to hear the music is catchy, but not annoying :)

THE BEST!

I love super simple songs. I feel like they are the best and safest choice for our child. The videos are not visually over stimulating unlike other children’s nursery rhymes videos. I definitely love the fact that my child is not picking up certain behaviors from these videos, which I have noticed my child picking up from other nursery rhyme videos. There’s almost no violence in a lot of the videos. I really hope the creators stick with the current way of making videos, so we can continue to feel good about allowing our child to watch them.

Thank you for your very kind review Alexis! It's good to know that our approach to producing videos is working for you. We strive to keep things nice and calm for parents and teachers :)

Subscriptions

Super Simple Premium: 1 Year

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The developer, Skyship Entertainment, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.

Data Not Collected

The developer does not collect any data from this app.

Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More

Information

Seller
Skyship Entertainment Company

Size
283.9 MB

Category
Education

Age Rating
4+, Made for Ages 0–5

Copyright
© 2020 Skyship Entertainment Company

Price
Free

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Simple Kids | Vintage Inspired Kids' Clothing

 

 

interview

 

Melanie Ireland


tell us about who's behind the simple kids brand.  

Simple Kids is me, Melanie Ireland, and my team: Nathalie van Doormaal, who creates the collection with me; Charlotte Peeters, who works on finance and strategy, and Caroline Duynslaeger, who takes care of the commercial side for us. When the production arrives, we have a big team of family and friends who also assist with dispatching. 

HOW DID SIMPLE KIDS COME ABOUT? WHAT DID YOU DO BEFORE STARTING THE BRAND?

Before I worked as a women's fashion designer. But I had wanted to follow my own path for a long time, so when I fell pregnant I decided to start a collection of kids' fashion. 

HOW DO YOU CREATE A COLLECTION? wHAT INSPIRES YOU?

We start by collecting all the things that we like - colours, prints, images, pieces of embroidery - and then we try to bring everything together in line with our vision. It's a bit like a puzzle we put together. When I travel, that inspires me a lot. 

BELGIAN BRANDS ARE WELL-KNOWN FOR THEIR CREATIVITY AND FOR BEING AVANT-GARDE. how do you explain that and WHERE do you feel THAT simple kids fits into that movement, alongside other brands like GOLD, MAAN, ANNE KURIS...? 

You're exactly right. Belgian brands are known for their creativity. We all have our own identity and style, and it's clear that this comes from Belgium. In fact, we are quite in your face because we don't make classic or traditional clothes for children. In Belgium, parents put lots of effort into dressing their kids with style. 
 


IF SIMPLE KIDS WAS A BRAND FOR ADULTS, WHAT WOULD IT BE LIKE?

It would be very similar because we have created our creations based on the clothes we like wearing ourselves. People often ask us why we don't do a collection for adults. That's why these last seasons, we've already created our favourite items in sizes 16 and 18. It's nice to be able to wear our own pieces. 

what are your upcoming projects for simple kids?

To open our own stores would be nice and good way to show our vision of our collections.

and how does smallable fit into all that?

We've been big fans of Smallable from the very beginning and are really happy that Smallable sells our collections. It gives us excellent online exposure, in a way that's very positive. We like your very refined site design, the magazine and Cécile and Pierre's excellent taste. 

can you share with us a few of your favourite addresses or secret spots from your travels?

In Antwerp, we have a number of shops for kids that are really nice: Kids on the docks, Brussel, Space Antwerp.
Restaurants in Antwerp: Veranda, Klein, The Jane.
Restaurants in Paris: Le Dauphin and we always go to Rose Bakery.
Restaurants in New York: Lure, Freeman’s, Vic’s and Gitanes.
Destination recommendations: My last trip was to Tulum in Mexico and Burma, which I really loved. 

Read online “Just Children”, Patti Smith – LitRes

© 2010 by Patti Smith

© S. Silakova, translation into Russian, 2011

© A. Bondarenko, art design, layout, 2011

© OOO “ Astrel Publishing House, 2011

CORPUS ® Publishing House

All rights reserved. No part of the electronic version of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet and corporate networks, for private and public use, without the written permission of the copyright owner.

* * *

Much has been said about Robert, and more will be said. The boys will imitate his walk. Girls will wear white dresses and mourn his curls.

He will be cursed and idolized. To condemn or romanticize its extremes. As a result, the truth about him is learned through his work: the artist's works are his material body.

The body that does not wither. The body, which people do not have the power to judge: after all, art sings about God and, by and large, belongs only to Him.

Foreword

He died while I was sleeping. I called the hospital to once again wish him good night, but he forgot, sank to the bottom, under the thickness of morphine. I pressed the receiver to my ear and listened to his heavy breathing from the other end of the wire, knowing: I hear it for the last time.

Then she quietly put her things in their places: a notebook, a fountain pen. The cobalt glass inkpot is his inkwell. My Jamshid bowl [1] , my Purple Heart [2] , box with milk teeth. I slowly walked up the stairs, counting the steps, one by one, counting fourteen. She covered the baby in the cradle with a blanket, kissed her sleeping son, lay down next to her husband, said a prayer. I remember how I whispered: "Still alive." And fell asleep.

I woke up early and, going down the stairs, realized that he was gone. The complete silence in the house was broken only by the TV, which had not been turned off since the evening. Some channel of classical music. Some kind of opera. I was drawn to the screen as if by a magnet at the moment when Tosca sadly and ardently confessed her passionate love for Cavaradossi. The morning was cold: March. I put on a sweater.

She raised the blinds, and the office was lit up with light. She straightened the thick linen bedspread on her chair, chose a book on the shelf - the album of Odilon Redon, opened it in the picture with a woman in the sea: a huge head above the water, a small sea. “Les yeux clos” [3] . Behind closed pale eyelids is a world unknown to anyone. The phone buzzed, I stood up and picked up the receiver.

The youngest of Robert's brothers, Edward, called. He said: in the end, as he promised, he kissed Robert for me. I froze where I stood, petrified; then slowly, somnambulistically, she returned to her chair. And then Tosca sang the brilliant aria "Vissi d'arte". "I lived for love, I lived for art." I closed my eyes and folded my arms across my chest. Providence itself decided for me how I should say goodbye to him.

Born on a Monday

When I was very young, my mother took me for a walk in Humboldt Park on the banks of the Prairie River. Blurred, as if on glass photographic plates, pictures were imprinted in my memory: an old pavilion of a boat station, a round stage-“shell”, a stone arched bridge. The river flowed along a narrow channel, and then overflowed widely, and there, on the smooth surface of the lagoon, I saw a special miracle: a dress of white feathers, a long curved neck stretched upwards.

“Swan,” my mother said, noticing my delight. The creature cut through the glistening waters, flapping its huge wings, until it soared into the sky. His name did not in the least express his splendor, did not convey the feelings that arose in me. A need woke up in me, which I didn’t even know the name of - the desire to tell about the swan, about how white it is, how it moves, as if exploding on the move, how it slowly flaps its wings. The swan merged with the sky, and I could not find words to describe my impression. “Swan,” I repeated with displeasure, and my chest ached: an incomprehensible longing arose, imperceptible neither to passersby, nor mother, nor trees, nor clouds.

* * *

I was born on a Monday in Chicago on the North Side during the Great Snowstorm of 1946. December 30th. But it should have been a day later: babies who were born on December 31 arrived from the hospital with a dowry - a new refrigerator. No matter how hard my mother tried to keep me in her stomach, the birth began right in a taxi that barely crawled along the shore of Lake Michigan through a snow whirlwind. According to my father, I was born skinny and lanky and immediately fell ill with bronchopneumonia, and my father nursed me, holding steam in clubs over a basin of boiling water.

In 1948, during another snowstorm, my sister Linda was born. I was forced to quickly live up to my parents' expectations of me, my older sister. Mom was busy working at home ironing clothes, and I sat on the porch of the house where we rented furnished rooms and waited for the last horse cart in the city - the ice merchant's cart. The merchant gave me ice cubes wrapped in wrapping paper. I put one piece of ice in my sister's pocket. Then she climbed after her - but there was no ice.

When my mother was pregnant for the third time, waiting for my brother Todd, we left our cramped home in Logan Square and moved to Germantown, Pennsylvania. For several years they lived in temporary housing for military personnel and their families - a whitewashed barracks overlooking an abandoned field where wild flowers bloomed wildly. We called the field Patch, in the summer the adults sat there: they talked among themselves, smoked, passed jars of dandelion wine around, and we, the children, played on the field. Mother taught us the games of her childhood: “The sea is worried”, “The third extra”, “Chains, chains, who do you want?”. We wove wreaths of daisies, wore them around our necks, put them on our heads. In the evenings, they caught fireflies in jars, tore out their lights and made luminous rings.

My mother taught me to pray, a prayer she learned from her own mother. “O Heavenly Father, I go to sleep, And I commit my soul to You.” When it got dark, I knelt by my bed, and my mother stood by, pitched her cigarettes and listened attentively as I repeated the lines after her. I prayed with all my heart, but the words of the prayer made me nervous, and I pestered my mother with questions. What is a soul? What color is she? I was afraid that my soul - it is mischievous after all - would run away while I was sleeping and never come back. That is why I tried with all my might not to doze off, to keep my soul in me - in the right place.

My mother enrolled me in Bible school, probably to satisfy my curiosity. There they memorized verses from the Old Testament and the words of Jesus. After the lesson, we lined up, and we were rewarded with honey in a honeycomb, which we took out with a spoon from a jar - one for all the children, and the children vied with each other coughing. I instinctively dodged the spoon, but quickly accepted the idea of ​​God. I was pleased to imagine that there was someone above us: he was always in motion, like liquid stars.

Children's prayer did not suit me, and soon I asked my mother: “May I compose my own?” What a relief it was when you no longer needed to repeat: “And if, God, I die in my sleep, take my soul to heaven with You,” but instead to express everything that is in my heart. So, they gave me freedom, and, lying on my bed by the coal stove, I enthusiastically turned to God with long prayers, silently moving my lips. I suffered from insomnia and must have tired the Lord a lot with my endless oaths, visions and plans. But over time, she switched to prayers of a different kind: silent ones, for which it was necessary to listen more than speak.

My verbal stream has spread, replaced by a feeling that I am either expanding or contracting. So I entered the radiant world of fantasy. He became most distinct in the feverish heat of influenza, measles, chickenpox or mumps. I had been ill with all these diseases, and each one raised my consciousness to a new level. I huddled deep inside my "I" and watched the symmetry of a snowflake rotate above me, flaring up brighter and brighter through closed eyelids; so I got the most valuable souvenir - a reflection of a heavenly kaleidoscope.

Gradually my love for prayer began to compete with my love for books. I sat at my mother's feet and watched her smoke, drink coffee, and turn the pages of a book in her lap. It intrigued me that my mother was so absorbed in reading. I didn't go to school yet, but I liked looking at my mother's books, ironing paper, lifting pieces of tissue paper from the frontispieces. What is it about these books that mom doesn't tear herself away from them? When Mom Found Me Sleeping on Her Raspberry Fox Book of Martyrs [4] - hiding the tome under my pillow, hoping to absorb its meaning - then sat me down at the table and began the laborious process of learning to read and write. At the cost of overwork, we defeated Mother Goose and moved on to Dr. Seuss. When I was sufficiently skilled, my mother allowed me to sit next to her on a soft - you sit down and fall through - sofa: she read "Fisherman's Shoes" [5] , and I - "Red Shoes" [6] .

I'm just obsessed with books. I dreamed of reading everything that is in the world. And what I read gave rise to new impulses in me. Shouldn't I go to Africa to offer my services to Albert Schweitzer? Or put on a hat with a raccoon tail, attach a gunpowder horn to your belt and protect the common people like Davy Crockett? Or climb high into the Himalayas and settle in a cave: turn a prayer wheel to make the Earth turn? But most of all I wanted to express myself, and my brother and sister became my first earnest accomplices, who willingly ate the fruits of my imagination. They listened to my tales with their mouths open, played enthusiastically in my plays, and fought bravely in my wars. It seemed: since my brother and sister are for me, nothing is impossible for us.

I was often sick in the spring. She was bedridden, doomed to hear only from the side, through the open window, the cries of those playing in the street. In the summer, the younger ones reported to me how much of our wasteland they managed to defend against the onslaught of the enemy. We have lost more than one battle in my absence; my weary soldiers gathered at my bedside, and I blessed them with verses from the little warrior's bible, Robert Louis Stevenson's Children's Poetry Flower Garden.

In winter we built snow forts, and I led the campaign as a general: I drew maps and marked with arrows our strategic plans, advances and retreats. We fought the wars of our Irish grandfathers - the confrontation between orange and green. We wore orange, but we had no idea what it meant: it's just our uniforms. When the fighting got boring, I declared a truce and went to visit my friend Stephanie. She was recovering from a disease beyond my comprehension, leukemia or something like that. Stephanie was older than me - she was probably twelve years old, and I was eight. In fact, I had nothing much to say to her, and I hardly brightened up her life, but it was clear that my company gave Stephanie great joy. Her older sister would hang my wet clothes to dry and bring us cocoa and crackers on a tray. Stephanie leaned back against a mountain of pillows, and I wove stories and read her comics. To be honest, I probably didn’t befriend Stephanie out of the kindness of my heart – I just wanted to admire her riches. I stared in fascination at her collection of comics: huge stacks, compensation for a whole childhood spent within four walls. She had every issue of Superman, Little Lulu, Classic Comics, and Mystery House. In an old cigar box, Stephanie kept a full set of charms for 1953: tape measure, typewriter, skater, red Pegasus - Exxon Mobil logo, Eiffel Tower, ballet pointe shoes, key chains in the shape of all forty-eight US mainland states. I could play with them endlessly. If Stephanie had a double of a talisman, she gave it to me.

I had a hiding place under the floorboard next to the bed. There I kept a stash - money won in balloons, as well as a collection of inserts and religious objects rescued from the trash cans near Catholic houses: faded paper icons, frayed scapulars [7] , plaster saints with broken fingers and feet. There I hid what I brought from Stephanie - I vaguely guessed that I should not accept gifts from the sick. But still she took them and hid them, feeling slight remorse.

I promised to visit Stephanie on Valentine's Day, but I didn't. My duties as a general at the head of an army of Linda, Todd and the neighborhood guys were very tiring. In addition, thick snow was falling - the winter was generally harsh. The next day, I left the battle post to drink cocoa with Stephanie. She was somehow sleepy, begged me not to leave, but she herself dozed off.

I reached into her treasure chest. The box was pink; you lift the lid - and inside the ballerina begins to spin, poured out by the Dragee Fairy. One brooch in the form of a figure skater captivated me so much that I put it in a mitten. And, petrified with fear, she sat for a long time by Stephanie's bed; then she got up and tiptoed out, and Stephanie never woke up. I tucked the brooch into the bottom of my hiding place. I slept in fits and starts that night: my conscience woke me up. I woke up all broken, I couldn’t go to school: I lay in bed, crushed by a load of guilt. Mentally vowed to return the brooch and ask for forgiveness.

The next morning my sister Linda's birthday came, but the holiday was canceled: Stephanie got worse, and my parents went to the hospital to donate blood for her. When they returned, my father was crying, and my mother knelt by my bed and told me that Stephanie had died. She felt my forehead, and her grief was instantly replaced by anxiety: I was on fire. It turned out I had scarlet fever. In the fifties, this disease was very feared: it often turned into an incurable form of rheumatism. Our apartment was quarantined, the door was painted yellow. The disease bedridden me, and I did not go to Stephanie's funeral. Her mother brought me all the stacks of comics and a cigar box with key chains. Now I had all Stephanie's treasures, but I couldn't even look at them - I felt too bad. It was then that I felt the weight of sin, even such a small one as stealing a brooch. Realized that no matter how hard I tried to behave, now I can not become a saint. And Stephanie's forgiveness will never be earned. But one of the sleepless nights, in bed, I suddenly realized: what if you can talk to Stephanie if you pray to her or at least ask God to put in a word for her?

Robert liked this story very much, and sometimes, on some cold, listless Sunday, he begged me to tell it again.

“I want to hear about Stephanie,” he said.

In those long mornings of ours under the covers, I did not omit a single detail: I told, as if written, the stories of my childhood, its miracles and sorrows, and Robert and I tried to convince ourselves that we were not at all hungry. And every time I got to the point of opening the jewelry box, Robert would scream, “Oh no, Patty, no…” a girl, and Robert is a good boy, but he is trying to become a bully. Years passed, and we exchanged roles among ourselves again and again, until we came to terms with the duality of our natures. Both principles coexisted in us: both light and darkness.

I was a dreamy child, I lived like in a dream. She puzzled teachers with the fact that she learned to read early, but was absolutely unable to find a practical application for her abilities, from the point of view of teachers. In my testimonial from school, different teachers wrote the same thing: “Too often hovering in the clouds, constantly distracted.” I myself do not know where I was carried away in my thoughts, but I often landed in a corner: they put me on a high chair for everyone to see and put a shameful paper cap on my head.

Later, for Robert, I drew these amusing scenes of humiliation - on large sheets of paper, in great detail. He loved these stories. It seems that Robert bowed to all the traits of my character that others seemed repulsive, alien. Thanks to this dialogue in drawings, my childhood memories became his memories as well.

* * *

I was upset when we were evicted from Loskut - we had to pack our bags and start a new life in southern New Jersey. Mom gave birth to a fourth child, a girl whom we raised together, the sickly but cheerful Kimberly. In a new place, among swamps, pig farms and peach orchards, I felt isolated. She went into books and into compiling an encyclopedia, which, however, did not advance beyond the article “Bolivar”. My father introduced me to science fiction, and at one time we looked for UFOs in the skies above the building where the local folk dance club was engaged. We made observations, and dad tirelessly refuted the theory of the origin of life on Earth.

At the age of eleven, nothing gave me so much pleasure as long walks with my dog ​​in the forest near my home. Rotting rots, jack-on-the-pulpit [8] and skunk cabbages protruded from the red clay soil. I found a cozy secluded place, sat down, laid my head on some fallen trunk near the stream, where tadpoles flickered in the water. In the dusty fields near the quarry, I and my devoted adjutant - my brother Todd - crawled like a bellies. Our diligent sister was assigned to bandage our wounds and supply us with precious water from my father's soldier's flask.

Once, limping, under the sun hanging over my head like a heavy anvil, I was returning from the front line to the rear, my mother jumped out of an ambush right at me.

- Patricia! she muttered. - Put on your blouse!

“It's hot in the blouse,” I snapped. - Everyone wears the same pants, but what about me?

- Even if it's very hot, it's time for you to wear a blouse. You are already big, you will soon become an adult young lady.

I was indignant, announced that I would never become any adult young lady, I would only be myself, and in general I am from the Peter Pan clan - we are not growing up.

Mom took over, and I put on a blouse, but I experienced bitter anguish: it seemed that I had been betrayed. I watched despondently as my mother did women's housework, noticed what a round, most feminine figure she had. And it seemed to me: all this - both housekeeping and roundness - is unnatural, contrary to my nature. I shuddered from the aroma of perfume and mouths red as bloody wounds - in the fifties they were perfumed strongly and painted thickly. At one time, I was sulky at my mother - she not only brought me bad news, but also personified this message. I sat with the dog at my feet, bewildered but defiant, and dreamed of distant lands. I’ll run away and enter the Foreign Legion, rise to the rank of officer, and begin to lead soldiers on forced marches in the desert.

I found solace in books. Oddly enough, Louisa May Alcott helped me to look at my female destiny from a positive side. Jo March, one of the characters in Little Women, a real “boy in a skirt,” becomes a writer in order to earn a living for herself and her family during the Civil War. In her rebellious, sloppy handwriting, she writes page after page - she writes stories for the local newspaper. Jo inspired me to pursue a new goal, and soon I was writing stories and telling my brother and sister long stories. It was then that I had a dream to write a book someday.

A year later, my father gave us a rare tour of the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Arts. My parents were busy, and traveling with four children on a bus to Philadelphia proved to be troublesome and expensive. For our family, this was the first and last trip somewhere all together, and for me, the first meeting with art face to face in my life. In the long, languid figures of Modigliani, I recognized myself as in a mirror, the elegantly frozen characters of Sargent and Thomas Eakins fascinated me, and the radiance of the Impressionists blinded me. But what struck me most deeply - pierced my heart - were the works from the Picasso room, from harlequins to cubism. I was taken aback by his unshakable self-confidence.

Father admired Salvador Dali: virtuoso technique, deep symbolic meaning. But he did not notice any merit in Picasso at all, and for the first time in our lives we had a big argument. Meanwhile, mother was busily gathering the younger ones around the halls - they scattered and slid along the smooth marble floors. As we filed down the gigantic stairs, I no doubt remained the same outwardly—a sullen twelve-year-old girl with bony elbows and knees. But deep down I knew that I had changed: it was revealed to me that people create works of art, and to be an artist means to see what others do not see.

I desperately wanted to become an artist, but I could not prove to myself that I had the makings. I dreamed that I felt a vocation for art in myself, and prayed that it would really manifest itself. But one day, when I was watching the film “The Song of Bernadette” with Jennifer Jones, it struck me that the young saint did not ask the Lord for a call from above. This abbess dreamed of becoming a saint, but God chose Bernadette [9] , a modest peasant girl. I got worried. I was quite ready to bear the heavy cross of calling, but what if I was never called?!

I grew by leaps and bounds. Five feet eight inches, and the weight is good if a hundred pounds. At fourteen, I was no longer a general in a small but loyal army, but a skinny outcast, the object of universal ridicule. There was no one below me on the school social ladder. I was saved by what helped out teenagers in 1961 - books and rock and roll. My parents worked the night shift. With my homework and homework done, Toddy and Linda and I danced to James Brown, The Shirelles , Hank Ballard from The Midnighters . I'm afraid to seem immodest, but still I will say: we danced no worse than we fought.

I drew, danced, composed poetry. She was not a child prodigy, she traveled on her rich imagination. The teachers encouraged me. When I won a competition sponsored by the local Sherwin-Williams paint shop, my work was displayed in a shop window, and the cash prize was enough for a wooden sketchbook and a set of oil paints. I scoured libraries and church giveaways for art books. Then you could buy beautiful editions literally for pennies, and I reveled in the world of Modigliani, Dubuffet, Picasso, Fra Angelico and Albert Ryder [10] .

For my sixteenth birthday, my mother gave me the book The Extraordinary Life of Diego Rivera. I was struck by the scope of his frescoes, his wanderings and ordeals, love stories and creative efforts. That summer, I got a job at the factory as a checker, checking handlebars for tricycles. Hell of a job. From my monotonous duties, I escaped by plunging into dreams. She dreamed of joining the brotherhood of artists: like them, starve like them, dress like them, work and pray. I boasted that someday I would become the mistress of an artist: in my youth it seemed to me that nothing could be more romantic in the world. I imagined myself as Frida next to Diego, an artist and muse in combination. I dreamed of meeting some artist: I would love and support him and work side by side with him.

* * *

Robert Michael Mapplethorpe was born on Monday 4 November 1946. He was the third of six children in the family. He grew up in Floral Park on Long Island. The boy was mischievous, through his carefree childhood, love for the beautiful passed through the thinnest thread. The child's eyes caught and stored in memory every flash of light, every shimmer of a precious stone, the rich decoration of an altar, the gleam of a golden saxophone or a scattering of blue stars. He was shy, graceful, a little tidy. Even in early childhood, his soul burned itself and sought to ignite everyone around.


Philadelphia Bible School


On the day of First Communion. Floral Park, Long Island

The light illuminated the pages of his coloring book and his slender fingers. He loved to color pictures, not to fill in the gaps on the sheet, but to select colors that no one else would choose. In the green of the hills he saw scarlet. The snow is purple, the faces are green, the sun is silver. He liked the reaction of those around him, liked the fact that the brothers and sisters looked dumbfounded. He discovered in himself the talent of a draftsman. He was a graphic artist. He surreptitiously twisted objects in his drawings, turned them into abstractions, and sensed his growing power. He was an artist and knew it himself. No, I did not imagine myself as an artist, as children sometimes imagine. He just realized that it was given to him.

The light illuminated Robert's favorite toy - a set of DIY decorations: vials of enamel paint, tiny brushes. His fingers were dexterous. He reveled in his ability to assemble and decorate brooches for his mother. He was not embarrassed that this was a girl's activity, that DIY decorations were a traditional Christmas gift for girls. His older brother, an excellent sportsman, laughed. His mother, Joan, smoked cigarette after cigarette and watched tenderly as her son painstakingly stringed for her the next beads of small Indian beads. Later, he himself began to wear similar necklaces - already after he broke with his father, he refused to make a career in the Catholic Church, and in business, and in the army, when he became interested in LSD and vowed to live only for the sake of art.

It was not easy for Robert to decide to leave his family. He was irresistibly attracted to art, but he did not want to upset his parents. Robert rarely mentioned childhood and relatives. He certainly insisted that he had received a good upbringing, was protected from troubles and lived in full prosperity. But he always hid his true feelings, imitating the stoic character of his father.

Mother dreamed that he would become a priest. He liked to serve at the altar, but more because it was sweet to enter secret places. I liked the sacristy, the idea of ​​forbidden rooms, vestments and rituals. He was connected with the church not by religiosity, not by piety, but by a sense of beauty. Perhaps, the ecstasy of the battle between good and evil attracted because it reflected his inner struggle, highlighted the line that he could cross. And yet, at the first communion, he stood proud: he realized that he had fulfilled a sacred duty, he enjoyed everyone's attention. He had a huge Baudelaire bow around his neck, and a bandage on his sleeve, just like Arthur Rimbaud in his childhood photographs. Only Arthur, even in childhood, looked like a rebel.

The house where Robert lived with his parents was neither refined artistic taste nor bohemian disorder. It was a clean, comfortable mansion, typical of the post-war middle class: newspapers in the newspaper case, jewelry in the jewelry box. Harry, Robert's father, was sometimes stern and categorical. These qualities, as well as strong sensitive fingers, Robert inherited. And from his mother he took neatness and a sly smile, in which some kind of riddle always seemed.

Several of Robert's drawings hung in the hall of the house. While he lived with his parents, he tried hard to be a respectful son, he even chose a specialty according to his father's will - industrial design. If Robert discovered something on his own, he kept quiet. Robert loved to hear stories about my childhood adventures, but when I questioned him, he had little to tell. He said that in his family they never really talked to each other, did not read books, did not share their secrets. They did not have a common mythology: no stories about treasures, betrayals and snow fortresses. They lived in safety, but not in a fairy tale.

“My family is you,” said Robert.

* * *

In my youth, I got into trouble.

In 1966, at the end of the summer, I slept with a guy who was even younger than me, and we conceived a child the first time. I went to the doctor, but he did not believe my worries: he read me, slightly blushing, a lecture on the menstrual cycle and sent me off. But a few weeks passed, and I realized that I really was pregnant.

I grew up in a time when sex and marriage were absolute synonyms. Contraceptives could not be bought just like that, and at nineteen I was naively inexperienced in matters of sex. Our caresses were so fleeting and tender that I even doubted whether our lust was crowned with real intercourse. But nature turned out to be stronger than us and left the last word. The irony of fate did not escape me: it was on me, although I did not want to be a girl at all, let alone grow up, that this test fell. Nature knocked me down.

It was impossible to put the responsibility on the guy - seventeen years old, completely inexperienced. I had to take care of everything myself. On Thanksgiving morning, I sat on the couch in the laundry room at my parents' house. I slept in this room when I worked in the factory during the summer, and the rest of the time when I came from Glassboro Teachers College, where I studied. Voices were heard behind the wall: mom and dad were making coffee, brother and sisters, sitting at the table, laughed. And I’m the older sister, the pride of the family: I went to college, I study with copper money, I provide for myself! My father was afraid that I would not get married due to my clumsiness, and hoped that the profession of a teacher would become a sure piece of bread for me. If I remain without a diploma, my father will be simply smitten.

I sat for a long time and looked at my hands folded over my stomach. I freed the guy from responsibility: he was like a moth struggling to get out of a cocoon, and I would hate myself if I interfered with his clumsy birth to the big world. I knew the guy couldn't help me. But I also knew that I could not cope with a baby alone. I confided my secret to a kindly teacher, and he found an intelligent married couple who dreamed of a child.

I looked around my apartment: washing machine, dryer, large willow basket stuffed to the brim with dirty linens, my father's folded shirts on the ironing board. There was also a table on which I laid out my pencils, a sketchbook and a book of Insights.0035 [11] . I sat, plucking up the courage to talk with my parents, silently praying. For a moment it seemed to me that I was about to die, and just as instantly I realized: everything will be settled.

A tremendous calmness suddenly descended upon me. Having forced out fears, an all-conquering sense of my mission settled in me. It seemed that it was the child who instilled it in me - he realized how hard it was for me, he came to the rescue. I had complete peace of mind. I will do my duty, I will take care of my health, I will not despair. I will never regret the past. I will not return to the printing house, nor to the pedagogical college. I will become an artist. I'll prove that I'm worth something. I got up and went to the kitchen.

Just kids - Internet project "Adopt.ru"

Just kids - Internet project "Adopt.ru" For 17 years our website usynovite.ru has been helping children find a new home,
parents, faith in the future, and guardians and adoptive parents - parental happiness and new family members.
During the operation of the site, the number of profiles in the database of orphans decreased by more than 100,000.0031

The Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation has placed in the section "Where to go for an adoptive parent" a link to the online state data bank on orphan children launched these days, Tomskoil, a regional operator of the city region "Simply Children". Oksana Ivanovna Kravchenko, head of the Department for Family and Children Affairs of the Tomsk Region, spoke about the opportunities and additional amenities that are opened up to site visitors - and these are mainly candidates for foster parents. You can learn more about the project HERE; for more information - at the address: st. Tverskaya, 74, Tomsk, 634041, tel./fax (3822) 713-998, e-mail: [email protected]".

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News of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation

02/08/2019 will submit a bill on a change in the adoption of minors to the Government .

On February 8, the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation held hearings on the draft law “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation on the Protection of Children's Rights”. The event was attended by Deputy Minister of Education of the Russian Federation T. Yu. Sinyugina.

In the course of her speech, T.Yu. Sinyugina said that the department was ready to submit a draft law on changing the procedure for the adoption of minors to the Government.

– Over the course of six months, we met several times. And the reason for our meetings was an interested and indifferent conversation and work on the bill, which today is already ready for us to submit it to the Government, - said T. Yu. Sinyugina.

For reference

In December 2018, members of the Interdepartmental Working Group under the Ministry of Education of Russia prepared a draft law "On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation on the Protection of Children's Rights". The bill was posted on the federal portal of draft regulations for wide public discussion.

The draft law contains new approaches to the transfer of orphans to families, which will allow developing the guardianship institution, improving the conditions for training people who want to take an orphan child into their family.

For the first time, the draft law proposes to introduce the concept of "escort" into the federal legislation. It is planned that this authority will be vested in authorized regional authorities and organizations, including NGOs.

Special attention in the document is paid specifically to the adoption procedure, there is added a provision on the procedure for the restoration of adoptive parents in the duties of parents, if they were previously deprived of such an opportunity.

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