Review of the Day: Chernobyl, Life and Other Disasters by Yevgenia Nayberg

Chernobyl, Life and Other Disasters
By Yevgenia Nayberg
Edited by Taylor Norman
Neal Porter Books (an imprint of Holiday House)
$24.99
ISBN: 978-0823460588
For ages 9-12

I am under the distinct impression that I owe Yevgenia Nayberg an apology. Maybe more than one. Years ago she wrote the picture book I Hate Borsch! which I happened to find really funny. More than that, it was hella original. We see a fair number of food related books for kids in a given year, and from time to time they pinpoint foods that kids don’t like to eat, but nine times out of ten that food is broccoli. Borsch, in comparison, is colorful and not something your average American kid runs into quite as often. But because Yevgenia Nayberg grew up in Ukraine, she has a different take on the old standbys. Take the graphic novel memoir, for example. For better or for worse, they all sort of tend to follow the same Raina Telgemeier Smile model. The colors are bright, the art is a bit samey, and the storyline often includes the trials and tribulations of U.S. children. This year alone I’ve seen topics that include economic disparities, finding a new best friend, wanting to shave your legs to fit in, and escaping from the radiation of Chernobyl. Yes, all very average everyday…. wait, what? Go back a bit. Chernobyl? But see, that’s Yevgenia Nayberg again. And not only is she upsetting expectations of what a graphic novel memoir for kids can be, she’s funny while doing it! When your kids have devoured the samey samey GNs out there and they want a comic that’s a cut above (and doesn’t look like anybody else), that’s when you hit ‘em in the Chernobyl. Far and away a favorite of the year.

This should be easy. I mean, Genya’s mom is an artist, so logically it should be easy for Genya to become one too, right? Only it’s 1980s Ukraine and nothing is easy. Not really. As far as Genya can tell, her entire life plan hinges on getting into the most prestigious art school in the nation. That means learning how to make her art look patriotic and like everyone else’s (she can be creative later). And that’s before nearby Chernobyl has a nuclear meltdown. Suddenly she and her family are fleeing Kyiv, waiting to see what happens next. What do you do when you have a dream but something as annoying as a pesky nuclear power disaster stands in your way?

Doing the math, Yevgenia is just three years older that I am. Not that a lot of what she was going through looked all that familiar, but the way she writes, it doesn’t have to. In his blurb for this book, author Daniel Nayeri says that Nayberg finds, “the brilliant in the banal, the hilarious in the harrowing, and the universal in the personal.” It’s that last point, the universal in the personal, that stood out the most to me. Genya is just so relatable. From wanting to grow her hair out for years (and being denied that chance because her mom wants it short) to harboring a grudge against her cousin, you just feel like you understand this gal. One might argue that that’s what the truly great authors of autobiographies for kids must do. If you see the subject of the book as distant and strange, it’s much harder to empathize with them. And in a way, it’s amusing to me the degree to which Genya’s life feels relatable, even if Chernobyl’s just down the road. Our kids all experienced the COVID lockdowns when they were younger. One way or another, I think they can all understand that sometimes, when you live through a disaster, it doesn’t strike you at the time as all that out of the ordinary.

Of course what really lets this book stand out is the art. Nayberg has a style that literally looks like no one else’s. If Picasso were to live today and took it into his head to write a graphic novel memoir, he might produce something akin to what Nayberg is pulling off here. There’s a fair amount of mixed media (which is to say, photographs) in the book, but the figures and characters have this incredible style to them. I’m not entirely certain how to describe it. Picture what would happen if you were to turn Venn Diagrams into people and allow them to walk around on the page. That’s my imperfect praise. Something that will certainly turn off those kids that seek the norm. Something that will also attract the ones who like humor and something a bit new.

Books of this sort are rare jewels. When I read one I immediately wish that I had twenty more like it. Imagine, if you will, a series of graphic novel memoirs, all penned by cartoonists that lived through, or were adjacent to, major moments in world history. Nayberg humanizes something as distant (to Americans) and foreign as the Chernobyl disaster by focusing on the elements kids will completely understand. I mean, the whole reason she has to cut her hair at all is just because it’s potentially radioactive. In lieu of a series of books like this focused on true stories of kids living through horrors (but also really wanting to eat cherries as a consolation prize if you fail at something), the best pairing for this book is probably The Genius Under the Table by Eugene Yelchin. It’s not a strict graphic novel, but it is highly illustrated and also has a sense of humor about a time in history (in his case, growing up in the U.S.S.R.) when that wasn’t a given.

Sometimes I wonder why comics and sequential art make for such brilliant pairings with autobiographical texts. I’m no expert, but if I had to guess I’d say that it probably has something to do with the nature of memory. Grow old enough and memories fuzz, mix, and get shortened. If you had to write down your history longhand, you’d quickly find yourself filling in the gaps with a bit of fiction. Comics, in contrast, let those odd little moments that you remember stand on their own. They can be neatly excised into their own little boxes and panels. As a result, incidents in the life of a child retain that odd uncertainty the kids were already familiar with in a strangely honest way. Kids recognize that, even if they’re not entirely certain why they connect to these books so dearly. I’m just happy that the world of comics has extended so far as to start to include books like this one. Odd and honest, this humanizes the past brilliantly. Like nothing else out there, and that’s worth something in and of itself.

On shelves now.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

Filed under: Best Books, Best Books of 2026, Reviews, Reviews 2026