The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge

A Long Road on a Short Day

Arcady's Goal

The Genius Under the Table: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain

The House of a Million Pets

Counting on Grace

After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away

Things A Bright Girl Can Do

One of Horn Book's Best Fiction Books of 2011

Sasha Zaichik has known the laws of the Soviet Young Pioneers since the age of six:
The Young Pioneer is devoted to Comrade Stalin, the Communist Party, and Communism.
A Young Pioneer is a reliable comrade and always acts according to conscience.
A Young Pioneer has a right to criticize shortcomings.
But now that it is finally time to join the Young Pioneers, the day Sasha has awaited for so long, everything seems to go awry. He breaks a classmate's glasses with a snowball. He accidentally damages a bust of Stalin in the school hallway. And worst of all, his father, the best Communist he knows, was arrested just last night.

This moving story of a ten-year-old boy's world shattering is masterful in its simplicity, powerful in its message, and heartbreaking in its plausibility.

Discover Your Child's Next Read

The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge

M.T., Erson, Eugene Yelchin, Anderson M.T., 2018

A Long Road on a Short Day

Eugene Yelchin, Gary D. Schmidt, Elizabeth Stickney, 2020

Arcady's Goal

Eugene Yelchin, 2014

The Genius Under the Table: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain

Eugene Yelchin, 2021

The House of a Million Pets

Eugene Yelchin, Ann Hodgman, 2007

Counting on Grace

Elizabeth Winthrop, 2006

After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away

Joyce Carol Oates, 2006

Things A Bright Girl Can Do

Sally Nicholls, 2017