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*** Here's a magazine interview with Natalia Vodianova who sweetly mentions the role of The Boy from Baby House 10 in opening her eyes to the plight of children in state institutions in Russia. The journalist seems more interested in Natalia's legs (a common failing among men, now also seen in female reporters). Natalia has written a foreword for the Russian edition of the book, which is coming out (I hope) in the autumn.
*** If you missed the Dateline NBC documentary on The Boy from Baby House 10, you can catch it on the web here There are six parts to the documentary, as well as some web extras including an interview with Natalia Vodianova, the supermodel who is campaigning to get children out of state institutions. It's a superb piece of work!
*** If you're in the US, be sure to watch Dateline NBC this Sunday, April 10, 7pm eastern time. NBC will be showing a documentary based on The Boy from Baby House 10. Here is a link to the trailer on the NBC website.
This project has taken more than two years. In October last year NBC took Alan, Sarah and John back to Moscow. John got to see and thank some of the volunteers and activists he recruited to help him in his early years. He also met up with a couple of people close to him – we won’t give the game away – who he thought he’d probably never see. He now has an old/new family in Moscow besides his American one.
Thanks to Sarah’s persistence, John managed to revisit the places where he was locked away for the first eight years of his life.
We spent months trying to track down some video of John from 1996 which we feared had been lost. At the last minute, when the documentary had already been scheduled, it turned up in a chaotic Moscow apartment, buried under a pile of Super VHS cassettes. This footage is a real find: it will bring home how truly extraordinary is the story of John’s survival.
Don't miss it! ***
*** The Boy from Baby House 10 is published in paperback in the US on Feb 15. You can see the cover and buy it here. More info and pictures on the book's Facebook page. ***
*** Here's an article from the London Evening Standard about how supermodel Natalia Vodianova had her eyes opened to the plight of children with disabilities in Russian state instututions by reading The Boy from Baby House 10. ***
*** The Boy from Baby House 10 is now published in paperback in the UK - and it's even better than the hardback. It's got a new foreword by the Russian supermodel Natalia Vodianova - you may not know the name but she's the one with the eyes of a lioness. To find out why she was so moved by the book, and why it's changing her life... - well, it's all in the new edition. ***
*** The BBC World Service has broadcast a radio interview with Alan, Sarah and John. You can listen to it on the BBC website here. The Outlook programme normally does three subjects per show, but they loved John's story so much that they devoted the whole broadcast to it! ***
***The Boy from Baby House 10, under its German title Wolkengänger (which means "Cloud Walker"), is selling well. At the end of March Alan spoke in three German cities, Leipzig, Erfurt and Meiningen, accompanied by the award-winning actress Katja Riemann who kept the audience spellbound with her readings from the German translation. The turnout was very good: 500 people paid 12 euros to hear her read in the university auditorium in Erfurt. You can see the cover here and a video (in German) about it here. ***
*** Read Alan's article Orphan freed from a life behind Russian bars in The Sunday Telegraph here. ***
*** Read John and Paula's interview with Michael Matza of The Philadelphia Inquirer here ***
Latest Reviews
"There is something decidedly Dickensian about this deeply moving, frequently enraging and ultimately uplifting account of how a severely disabled child blessed with an unquenchable spirit triumphs over adversity with the aid of good-hearted people....
These days, he is John Lahutsky, a bright, outgoing 20-year-old who refused to let his wonky legs (damaged by the early years of neglect in Russia) prevent him from overcoming tough physical challenges with the Scouts. One senses his hand behind the book's poignant dedication: 'To the children who never made it'."
Philip Jacobson in The Daily Mail. Click here to read the rest of this review, and here to read the other reviews.
