Review: The Genius Under the Table
The Genius Under the Table: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain written and illustrated by Eugene Yelchin Candlewick Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz Buy at Bookshop.org Set in Cold War Russia, Eugene Yelchin’s The Genius Under the Table offers middle grade readers a darkly humorous look into Yelchin’s experience growing up in the USSR during the Cold War. Yelchin wrote and illustrated this delightful graphic memoir, in which a young Yevgeny Yelchin and his family go through the pains and perils of living under a communist regime. The family- Yevgeny and his older brother Victor, their parents, and Yevgeny’s grandmother- all sleep in one room in their apartment bloc. They are not-very-secretly watched by their neighbor, Blinov, who spies on everyone for the KGB. Life is especially difficult for the Yelchins because as Jews, they are a constant target of blatant and subversive antisemitism. But Yevgeny’s main concern is finding his special talent. His older bro