Vera Vasilievna Chaplina (Russian: Вера Васильевна Чаплина; 24 April 1908 – 19 December 1994) was a Soviet children's literature writer and naturalist.

She appeared so often and stayed so long that she finally attracted the attention of professor Pyotr Manteifel, the zoo's principal naturalist, and he asked her if she would like to become a junior helper.

[8] Over the years Vera Chaplina and her family played host at home to a number of animals — wolves, a leopard, a lynx and a lion cub named Kinuli.

And so Kinuli came to be raised in a Moscow apartment in the middle 1930s with Chaplina, her husband, young son and brother — and an assortment of neighbors and their children the growing lioness.

Chaplina's stories were translated into English, German,[14] French,[15] Spanish,[16] Portuguese,[17] Japanese[18] Chinese,[19] Hebrew,[20] Polish,[21] Czech,[22] Hungarian,[23] Latvian,[24] Estonian,[25] Romanian,[26] Danish,[27] Swedish,[28] and Serbian.