BREAKING STALIN'S NOSE

BREAKING STALIN'S NOSE, written and illustrated by Eugene Yelchin (Henry Holt 2011)(ages 9-12).  Ten-year-old Sasha idolizes his father, whom Comrade Stalin himself awarded the Red Banner, for his work with State Security.  And tomorrow, when Sasha will finally be allowed to join the Young Pioneers, his father will tie his red scarf around his neck.

But that night, Sasha's father is arrested as an enemy of the people, which means Sasha is an enemy, too.  He will never be allowed to become a Young Pioneer and the safe world he thought he knew is gone forever.

BREAKING STALIN'S NOSE exquisitely portrays Sasha's awakening to the corruption and oppression in Stalinist Russia while retaining a convincing child-centric point-of-view.  Chilling, fascinating, and at times horrifying.

WON TON: A CAT TALE TOLD IN HAIKU

Guest review by Mercury.

MROWRR! Pardon the language, but my person refuses to open the food can until I finish this recommendation. I freely admit that this is manifestly a peril of lacking opposeable thumbs, perhaps the only evolutionary deficiency in Felidae (It's all I can do to type -- the can opener is much more difficult [composure grooming]).

WON TON: A CAT TALE TOLD IN HAIKU, by Lee Wardlaw, ill. by Eugene Yelchin (Henry Holt 2011)(ages 4-8 [human years]).

WON TON is the story of the eponymous cat -- a Burmese, I believe -- who meets his boy in a shelter. He goes to his new home and, at first and understandably, investigates the underneath of the bed and is unwilling to partake of the victuals. Nevertheless, in the end, he decides that, perhaps, the boy is worth keeping, although he is not a fan of the name the boy insists on bestowing upon him.

I will confess that I, myself, discovered my people at a shelter in Chicago. WON TON elegantly captures the experience, with just the right amount of feline insouciance (and I congratulate Won Ton for his mastery of haiku -- human rhyming metrical schemes are somewhat difficult for both Felis and Panthera, although the latter would never admit it.). The drawings are handsome and expressive and nicely evoke Won Ton's stoic appraisals of, and reactions to, his circumstances.

Thank you. Now I must eat.