Eugene Yelchin (Breaking Stalin's Nose; The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge) grew up where street tar was a substitute for chewing gum, "asking questions was considered not patriotic" and the walls had ears--even those of your own home. Despite these challenges, he blossomed into an award-winning writer and illustrator. In this splendidly entertaining memoir of a bleak childhood in Cold War Russia, Yelchin turns a dark, drab world into a kaleidoscope of humorously enlightening anecdotes about a boy with a stolen pencil and a lot of questions.
Yelchin lived with his quirky parents, his athletically inclined older brother and his spunky grandmother. Together they were allotted one room in a communal apartment in Leningrad, where they shared the kitchen and bathroom with other tenants, including a KGB agent who spied on everyone. Yelchin recalls, "Our room was so small that every night Dad had to move all the furniture out of the way in order to unfold our beds." Yelchin's bed was a cot under his grandmother's enormous old dining table. After his family had gone to sleep, using a pencil he pilfered from his father, Yelchin would cover the underside of the table with drawings "like a ceiling of a prehistoric cave."
The Genius Under the Table offers a fascinating glimpse into life in the USSR through the eyes of an artistic, imaginative and very funny child. Yelchin adorns the story with his distinctive art, perfectly complementing the text, so each flip of the page brings a better understanding of this complex boy--his sense of humor, his understanding of the world and his struggles. Simply beautiful! --Jen Forbus, freelancer