“The Little Book” is very popular and is being republished as a fundraising effort to help the people of Ukraine.
It starts with ABC in Cyrillic and then short sentences and stories in Ukrainian.
In the 1930s and 1940s, as Ukrainian pioneers settled in grassland communities, the Little Book was a key element of the classroom, a way for immigrant children to connect with the language.
“My mother taught at a one-room school near Edmonton,” Lauren Saiba told CTV National News.  “It was a way for Ukrainian-Canadian children to learn the language.”
Now Shyba, who works as a publisher with Durvile & Uproute Books in Millarville, Alberta, is using the old book to make a new connection with Ukraine: it is republishing a translated version of the text, with the proceeds from its sale going at the Canada-Ukraine Foundation.
“This is one way I can contribute by creating a special humanitarian edition of the same book, this time with an English translation,” Shyba said.
On the Durvile & Uproute Books website, Shyba explains that her mother and babka spoke fluent Ukrainian and read to her from The Little Book as a child.
The original book was first published in 1932 in Ukraine, published by the Basilian Brothers in Zhovkva, near Lviv, but the company says that the version being republished today is an updated version.
Her original goal was to raise $ 10,000 through the sale of the book to help displaced families in Ukraine.
Only in pre-orders did they reach this number before the new first edition was even printed.
By the end of April, at least 4,000 copies will be delivered to bookstores and there is an audio version with music and narration by Shyba’s cousin in Ukraine, who hails from the hard-hit city of Odessa.
“He recorded his voice on the phone and the music and sent it via WhatsApp and I dragged it with my own narration,” Shyba said.
Translation was sometimes a challenge, as many of the written stories contained in the book are between 80 and 90 years old or older, including poems by the legendary Ukrainian author Taras Shevchenko.
Magda Stroinska is a linguist who volunteered to help translate The Little Book.
“I am very proud,” he told CTV National News.  “I am just happy because I think this is something that remains.  “Something that reconnects generations.”
In Canada, where the Ukrainian diaspora is the third largest in the world, The Little Book is popular again, this time not only helping to celebrate the beauty and language of Ukraine, but helping the people themselves as they suffer from the war. .