BREAKING STALIN'S NOSE

Bibliographic Information: Velchin, Eugene. Breaking Stalin’s Nose. 2011. New York, NY : Henry Holt and Company, LLC.  ISBN 978-0-8050-9216-5.

Summary:
During the time of Stalin’s rule in the Soviet Union, ten-year-old Sasha Zaichik lives with his widower father and 48 others in a single apartment.  He idolizes his father, a devoted Communist and member of the State Security secret police, but when police take his father away and leave Sasha homeless, he is forced to examine his beliefs. 

Critical Analysis:

In the final paragraph of the author’s note at the book’s end, Velchin says: “I set this story in the past, but the main issue in it transcends time and place.  To this day, there are places in the world where innocent people face persecution and death for making a choice about what they believe to be right.”  This statement effectively sums up the theme of Breaking Stalin’s Nose.  Velchin uses the facts of his own childhood, as experienced by the fictional Sasha Zaichik, to illustrate the horrors of life under Stalin’s regime but the theme is a universal one.  There are modern day rulers as totalitarian and repressive as Stalin and those horrors are just as real.

It is very easy to identify with Sasha and other characters in the novel as they live in fear of being reported for imaginary crimes against the state.  The narrative is a harrowing one as readers realize that Stalin’s repression and extermination of his people is something that has taken place (and continues to take place) in countries throughout the world.  The setting of Stalinist Russia could just as well be modern-day Sudan. 

The story is so authentic in its representation of such repression that it’s a hard read.  Knowing that the author lived a similar story, however, and left the country relatively unscathed, gives readers hope at the story’s end. 

Book Review Excerpts:  “This is an absorbing, quick, multilayered read in which predictable and surprising events intertwine. Velchin clearly dramatizes the dangers of blindly believing in anything. Along with Ruta Sepetys's Between Shades of Gray (Philomel, 2011), this selection gives young people a look at this dark history.” - Renee Steinberg, formerly at Fieldstone Middle School, Montvale, NJ --Reviewed August 1, 2011 in School Library Journal, vol 57, issue 8, p 125).

“Yelchin's graphite illustrations are an effective complement to his prose, which unfurls in Sasha's steady, first-person voice, and together they tell an important tale. A story just as relevant in our world, "where innocent people face persecution and death for making a choice about what they believe to be right," as that of Yelchin's childhood.  Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2011.

Awards: 

ALA Notable Children's Books - Middle Readers Category: 2012
Mitten Award (Michigan)

Connections/Further Activities:

Pairing the reading of the novel with clips from documentaries on Stalin and his repressive regime would help students visualize the ruler and further comprehend the depth of the devastation of his rule.

Initiating a discussion on modern-day/current repressive governments around the world and how those countries' citizens are affected would drive home the idea that governments such as Stalin's are not a thing of the distant past and inform students that such activities are still occuring.  This could lead to a critical thinking exercise and a dialogue about how students feel about the United States intervening in such situations.  Should we?  At what point?   

Title Read-A-Likes/Further Reading:
The boy who dared - Susan Campbell Bartoletti
I want to live – Nina Lugovskaya
The endless steppe – Esther Hautzig
The wall – Peter Sis
Leon's story – Leon Walter Tillage