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22 August 1939 year

Sergei Kozlov was born. Storyteller and author of "Hedgehog in the Fog" and other adventures featuring a touching group of little animals.

"How good it is that we have each other!" The little bear nodded.
— Just imagine: I’m not here, you’re sitting alone and have no one to talk to.
- Where are you?
- And I'm not here.
“That can’t happen,” said Little Bear.
"I think so too," said the Hedgehog. "But suddenly, I'm gone completely. You're alone. What are you going to do?"
- I'll run, search the whole forest and find you!<…>
— I am not here. I am nowhere.
— Then… Then I’ll run out into the field, — said the Little Bear. — And I’ll scream: “E-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e!”, and you’ll hear and scream: “Bear-e-e-e-e-e!” There.
"No," said the Hedgehog. "There's not a drop of me. Do you understand?"
"Why are you bothering me?" the Little Bear got angry. "If you're not here, then I'm not here either. Got it?"

The storyteller's parents are unknown. As a very young child, he ended up in a Moscow orphanage, from where he was adopted by Soviet civil servant Grigory Kozlov and his wife. It is believed that the child arrived in the USSR with a group of Spanish children evacuated at the beginning of World War II. The Kozlovs raised the boy as their own.

- And all winter you sat next to me on a stool?
- Yes, I gave you spruce tea to drink and applied dried herbs to your stomach...
“I don’t remember,” said Little Bear.
"Of course!" sighed the Hedgehog. "All winter you kept saying you were a snowflake. I was so afraid you'd melt away by spring..."

He began writing poetry in the eighth grade and fairy tales in the 1960s. He worked as a lathe operator, printer, stoker, and tour guide at the Pushkin Nature Reserve in Mikhailovskoye. He graduated from the Literary Institute. In 1972, he became a member of the Writers' Union.

"Hares don't grow old," said the Hare. "Hares die young."
- Why so?
— We're running, you understand? And movement is life.

Sergei Kozlov's stories are about loneliness and friendship, courage and weakness, fears, including the fear of death. They are children's tales with adult implications. Perhaps that's why Norshteyn's masterpiece adaptation of "Hedgehog in the Fog" was hailed by critics and animators around the world as the best animated film of all time in the early 2000s.

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