![]() ![]() When Mishka can no longer bear the cruelty of the street gangs and the police, Lucky, a large stray dog, finds him. In apt comparison to his situation, Mishka often thinks of a fairytale he used to read with his mother, The Little Match Girl. When they want him to steal, though, something his mother has forbidden, his dilemma is painfully real: Must he, in order to live? Mishka’s hunger, not only physical but emotional, is raw. Petersburg confuses Mishka, so he is at first grateful when a tribe of children adopts him. ![]() When Mishka runs, his life as one of millions of street urchins in Russia begins. In a terrible, largely off-stage scene, this man kills Mishka’s mother, then drags Mishka to the city to deposit him in an orphanage. His mother cannot cope, begins drinking, and introduces an abusive boyfriend into the home. Although a stark lesson in human-failing, this story, based on an actual event, is unexpectedly uplifting.Īs the book opens, Mishka’s Babushka, with whom he and his mother have been living, dies. Readers will be riveted by five-year-old Ivan’s tragic transformation from Mishka, his mother’s little bear, into Malchik, dog boy, a member of a pack of feral dogs trying to survive on the streets of St. ![]()
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