There will be no gruesome images of Ukrainian fire-fighters keeling over in sub-standard hazmat suits, because Nayberg wasn’t there to see it. She was “just” a kid, but Chernobyl still loomed large over her childhood.
In fact, Nayberg and her mother successfully found refuge in Russia with her aunt and cousin throughout most of the crisis mismanagement. However, they both returned to Kyiv earlier than most, so Nayberg could sit for her art school exam.
Indeed, her memoir still has much to say about the Soviet experience, especially her realization that nobody believed the state media. Obviously, that lack of trust made everything worse. Nayberg also gently but firmly documents the Soviet Union’s pervasive anti-Semitism. Consequently, Nayberg had to study and practice harder than anyone else, because only 1% of Jewish applicants would be admitted.
Of course, she was also a young girl dealing with school and her peers, so there are plenty of coming-of-age episodes that young readers will readily identify with. Just about any reader who had a youthful passion for art and drawing will relate to her as a character, even if they do not share her memories of sweeping her apartment with Geiger-counters.
Readers now have two excellent graphic novels capturing the dark days of Chernobyl. Matyas Namai’s Chernobyl: The Fall of Atomgrad provides a comprehensive and definitive chronicle of everything that went wrong at the V.I. Lenin Power Station—and it was a lot. Nayberg’s Chernobyl, Life, and Other Disasters provides a more personal but highly relevant perspective. Enthusiastically recommended for young people and teachers, Chernobyl, Life, and Other Disasters is now on-sale at book and comic retailers.
