Breaking Stalin's Nose by Eugene Yelchin

 

-from Goodreads

1. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Yelchin, Eugene. 2011. BREAKING STALIN’S NOSE. New York: Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 978-0-8050-9216-5. 

2. PLOT SUMMARY
Sasha Zaichik wants nothing more than to become a Young Soviet Pioneer. He idolizes his father, who is a security agent for the Communist party, but he idolizes their fearless leader even more, Stalin himself.  Sasha tries not to question or doubt the ideals he’s been taught. Although, every now and then, his conscience gets in the way.  Then one day, the unexpected happens, and his dad, the most loyal Communist he knows, is arrested as an enemy of the state.  In a heart wrenching sequence of events, Sasha’s whole world gets turned upside down. Through a sad chain reaction of events, which includes the loss of a sacred nose, Stalin’s world of suspicion and oppression affects even the most loyal of comrades.

3. CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Yelchin’s author note reveals how personal this story is for him.  The book is dedicated to his father, “who survived the Great Terror.” I can only imagine what it was like for him to create a character who idolized the infamous Stalin. The reader more easily has compassion for the young Communist narrator, whose naivete is understandable given his age.  However, Yelchin displays the almost unbelievable influence Stalin had on the Russian people through the adult characters and their behavior.  The tone of the story is satirical, as Yelchin intentionally points to the ironies and paradoxes of the Communist regime of that time.  He characterizes the teacher, as well as the principal and other security agents, as indoctrinated buffoons, whose logic and loyalties are easily swayed. Fear and want are unspoken characters in the story.  

4. AWARDS & REVIEW EXCERPT(S)
Newbery Honor Book, 2012

Horn Book Magazine Starred (Sept. 2011): “Appropriately menacing illustrations by first-time novelist Yelchin add a sinister tone. Although the story takes place over just two days, it is well paced, peeling off the layers of Sasha's naiveté to show him -- and young readers -- the cynicism of the system he trusted.”

School Library Journal (Aug. 2011): “This is an absorbing, quick, multilayered read in which predictable and surprising events intertwine. Velchin clearly dramatizes the dangers of blindly believing in anything.”

5. CONNECTIONS
*This book could pair with Catch you Later, Traitor by Avi for a great compare and contrast study.  One focuses on the suspicions and paranoia within the Communists of Russia, and the other is about the suspicions and paranoia about Communists in the US. Same kind of fear, but in opposite scenarios!
*Which Way is Home, by Maria Kiely- about a Czech family, whose dad disappears, love than fear of Russian Communism, or Paper Cowboy by Kristin Levine, another American contrast story, with themes of bullying and paranoia.