Illustrated children's books rely perhaps more than others on the creative relationship between the author and the artist. The Marshak-Lebedev collaborations are emblematic of the extraordinary talent of two remarkable individuals of the generation of transition - both born in the late 19th century, both at their most active during the Soviet era. Samuel Iakovlevich Marshak (1887-1964) is recognised both as a poet, a talented satirist, and an outstanding translator of English literature (Shakespeare, Keats, Blake, Wordsworth, Kipling, among others). In 1923, he became an editor-in-chief of the journal Novyi Robinzon (The New Robinson), and eventually of the Leningrad editorial board of OGIZ, the state publishing house. As an editor, he was highly effective in persuading gifted writers and artists to write for children; as a children's author, he had a special talent for taking the most indigestible ideas of the Soviet social order and writing about them without sounding pompous or didactic. Vladimir Vasil'evich Lebedev (1891-1967) distinguished himself both as a painter and as a graphic artist and one of the founders of "Okna Rosta," a massive media publicity blitz to which he himself contributed more than 500 posters. In his early work, Lebedev often combined cubist techniques with the elements of folk 'lubok' in a highly original system of representation. Together, Lebedev and Marshak collaborated on close to fifty titles, many published and republished in dozens of editions. Titles such Vchera i segodnia (Yesterday and Today, 1925), O glupom myshonke (A silly mouse, 1925), Tsirk (Circus, 1925), Bagazh (Luggage, 1927), and Mister Tvister (1933) are intimately known to several generations of children and their parents. Lebedev also successfully illustrated Marshak's adult verse and some of his translations.