Chief Vasily

When I was a kid, my mother used to get me these Russian children's books (which were books for children featuring Russian children, btw). At that point I think they were the Soviet Union; which is beside the point anyway. 'Chief Vasily' was one of my favorite books then. Me being jobless and all these days, I decided to track down this book and see if I can buy it. Sadly for me, the only reference I could find through the mighty Goog was this . (And no, its not available on Amazon too). There were also a few sponsored links when I included the word book. But unfortuantely, these are in Russian. Oh wait a second, I found it. Yipee ! I found it through a bookstore called Campusi . I don't recognize the author though- Tatyana Efimchenko-Evlakhova . I also used to love reading Nikolai Nosov's books - Rat-a-tat-tat! stories, Eleven Stories for Boys and Girls, Visiting grandpa, Mishka's porridge... Apparently, there is a series called Dunno and his adventures, which I seem to have totally missed then. There is a story (in 11 stories for boys and girls, i think) where these 2 boys incubate eggs using a home-made contraption. The reason I mention this story is because it really got me interested in science and experiments.

Coming back to Chief Vasily, its the story of two friends, one of whom is Vasily. Oher than friendship, I can't remember what else the story was about. Unless my memory is completely failing me, I remember reading this phrase/adage/whatever in this book - 'He who laughs last, laughs best' and it made a huge impression on me when i was a kid and it got rolled in to my philosophy of life then and along with 'every dog has its day', it had the impact of making me nicer to others, or so I would like to think. :-) .

Update: Found Dunno online. Lots of others here.