Irina Tokmakova

Her first book of poetry, illustrated by Leo Tokmakov, was titledTrees, and was published in 1962.

Manukova graduated from high school with a gold medal in 1948. She had been writing poetry from her childhood onwards, but feeling that she lacked a literary talent, she decided to take up a career in languages. In 1953, she graduated from the philological department of the Moscow State University. She then entered a postgraduate programme in general and comparative linguistics, and began to work as an interpreter.

During the Second World War, she and her sister were sent to Penza to stay with relatives. For a while, there was no news from her parents, but some time later, her mother's orphanage was evacuated to Penza, and her parents were able to join her. They lived in Penza till 1943, after which they returned to Moscow, where the orphanage was re-established.

Irina Petrovna Tokmakova (née Manukova, 3 March 1929 — 5 April 2018) was a Soviet and Russian writer of children's books, a poet, playwright, and a translator of classic children's literature into Russian. Her translations of Tove Jansson, Astrid Lindgren and Kenneth Grahame's works were particularly renowned. She was a laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation for children's literature, and the Alexander Grin literary prize.