Война тележек: История одной детской книги.

1964 children's novel by Jean Merrill

The Pushcart War is a popular children's novel by the American writer Jean Merrill, illustrated by Ronni Solbert and first published by W. R. Scott in 1964. It is Merrill's best known work. 1964, US, HarperCollins (no ISBN), pub date 1972, hardback (first edition). Story set in 1976. 1985, US, Harper & Row, pub date 1985, hardback. Story set in 1996. 1995, US, Yearling Books , pub date 2005 August 1995, paperback. 2014, US, The New York Review Children's Collection , hardback (50th Anniversary Edition). Story set in 2026. The 50th Anniversary edition published in 2014 was prompted by a request for republication, as the book had gone out of print by 2012. Because most prior editions were published in paperback, the original ink drawings by Solbert were re photographed for the 50th Anniversary Edition.

The opening sentence of the first edition is "The Pushcart War started on the afternoon of March 15, 1976, when a truck ran down a pushcart belonging to a flower peddler." The prefatory material includes introductions by (the fictional) Professor Lyman Cumberly and the author, Jean Merrill, dated ten years after the opening sentence; later editions have changed the years so the dates would continue to be set in the future at the time of publication. Polly Goodwin, writing in the Chicago Tribune, called it "wonderfully funny and witty". Merrill won a Fulbright Fellowship in 1965 for the novel, and was a Horn Book Fanfare Best Book (1965). Upon its initial United Kingdom publication in 1973, the Times Literary Supplement praised the story's continued relevance. Lin Manuel Miranda reviewed the book in 1988 for his third grade class, recommending it "if you like excitement and comedy all in one". Author Adam Mansbach, who first read the novel at 9 years old, called it a story "full of unexpected reversals and understated witticisms" in 2013. When the 50th Anniversary edition was published in 2014, Alyssa Rosenberg called it "an argument for staying hopeful about the possibility of bringing about change, even when you are going up against entrenched and powerful interests" and compared it to A Canticle for Leibowitz in The Washington Post.

In 1980, the novel was adapted for the stage by Gregory Falls for the Young ACT Company in Seattle. Ela Bhatt wrote to Merrill in 1997, requesting permission to stage an adaptation in Bhopal, India on behalf of the Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA). In 2006, a musical adaptation was presented by Edric Haleen in Holt, Michigan, which Merrill praised for its faithfulness. Multiple attempts have been made to develop a film from the novel; Universal City Studios purchased the rights and in 1968 announced they were developing a musical to be written by Michael McWhinney, Jerry Powell, and Treva Silverman. Additional projects were announced in 1972, by publicist Larry Belling for an animated film using a script by Stan G. Spiegelman, and in 2002, for Jane Startz Productions, adapted by Soman Chainani. as of 2014, additional screenplays based on the novel have been started by Tony Kushner and Mansbach,