Chernobyl, Life, and Other Disasters

In this powerful graphic novel memoir, Nayberg (A Party for Florine) recounts her struggles developing her artistic sense of self while navigating the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Jewish 11-year-old Nayberg prefers pants to dresses, dislikes her masculine-sounding name, and despairs that people assume she’s a boy when her hair is short. “I would be extremely unpopular,” the subject admits, “except for one redeeming quality: I can draw!” Now old enough to take the entrance exam for Kyiv’s National Secondary School of Art, she works with a tutor to hone her creative skills. Her preparations are soon derailed when an accident at a nuclear plant 90 kilometers away in Chernobyl forces Nayberg and her family to evacuate Kyiv to stay with relatives in Volgograd. The creator plants subtle hints about the social and political pressures of living in the U.S.S.R.; adults speakcarefully over government-tapped phone lines while the youth searches for a way to pursue her dreams and attend the upcoming entrance exam. Frenetic snarls of scribbled pencil strokes—visible beneath muted watercolor and collage artwork produced on paper that seems purposefully creased—suggest that confusion and unrest lie beneath idyllic slice-of-life depictions of Nayberg’s childhood, and emphasize the narrative’s contrasting tones. An author’s note concludes. Ages 10–up. (Apr.)