Huckleberry Twistski

VANYA OF THE STREETS--Ruth Efferson Kennell--Harper ($2). The besprizornie, homeless children of the U. S. S. R., have long stained the Soviet escutcheon, pained proletarian hearts and necks. When Bolshevism engulfed the Imperial Ship of State thousands of these flotsam waifs were left floating on the careless waves. Young bandits beyond the reach of law, unspoiled by habit or hollow bones, they tasted vice and found it good. Their freedom disturbed political theory, their bad habits the peace. The Soviet now boasts that they have been almost all "reclaimed." Ruth Efferson Kennell is a young California woman who went as librarian to Kuzbas, big Siberian mining centre, in 1922. Since March, 1931 she has been a representative of Newspaper Enterprise Association in Moscow. She knows the wolf-children firsthand, has seen the medical students come into the open shelters at night to read besprizornie to sleep. Her book is the first one about modern Russia to be written specially for children in the U. S. Plush-coated American children will find what Huckleberry Finn found about Pilgrim's Progress, that "its statements are interesting but tough." Vanya's father died in the War, his mother in the famine of 1921. Hunger drew him from the empty provinces to crowded Moscow. Putting hook & crook together he scraped a living with aged beggars and thieves. Later, with his friend Boris, another besprizornie, he worked on his own. The House of Correction nabbed him but he escaped. Sick of loneliness and starvation, Vanya longed to "belong." Boris, a confirmed outlaw, kept him beyond the pale. The boys fled Moscow, worked back to Vanya's old village. They fought locusts off peasants' wheat, finally landed in a camp of Pioneers, Soviet Boy Scouts, who returned them to Moscow, saved for Sovilization. Vanya does not forget his homeless days, however; closes his Odyssey with its true theme-song: / am a lost boy, Lost am I forever! Gone father and mother, Gone sister and brother-- / wander all alone. . . .

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.