In her book, art historian Maya Balakirsky Katz covers a broad topic: Soviet animation. Although she adopts the lens of the contribution of Jewish artists to animation and the representation of Jewishness in the films, this is still a tall order, especially since the chosen lens at first inspires doubt: how can one rewrite the history of Soviet animation (not that a full one has been written) through the optics of Jewishness. Balakirsky Katz masters this task with admirable competence and sophistication, beginning with a spectacularly convincing introduction.

She associates the rise of Soviet animation—paradoxically—with Socialist Realism, and admits to her quite undefined and unidentified concept of Jewishness: for example, the technique of rotoscoping deployed well-known (Jewish) actors to trace movements in order to equip character with typological features. Balakirsky Katz handles the mechanisms of censorship with great subtlety and identifies the animation industry (specifically Soyuzmultfilm) as a safe haven for filmmakers in trouble.

The first chapter provides a solid survey of the emergence of Soviet animation, making a useful distinction between industry and artistry (32–33) and setting Soviet developments against Disney. Balakirsky Katz proceeds to analyze Black and White, about the exploitation of black workers in America, to comment on representation of race, followed by a study of ethnic minority representation of indigenous people in The Samoyed Boy.

Chapter 4 is devoted to the fairy tale and its significance in post-war animation with a description of Iosif Boiarskii's role in protecting projects from within the studio. The chapter includes a close analysis of a rather unmotivated selection of films, including Fedor Khitruk's Story of a Crime, where the criticism of modernity is rejected for a reading of “Mamin's psychological break as a result of his disconnectedness with his city” based on the director's Jewish background (111). Here, cracks begin to appear by rather forced readings of films. The following chapter interprets Cheburashka as a representative of Jews because of the creature's arrival in a box of oranges. For my taste, this is a little too simplistic. However, autobiographical backgrounds certainly feed into this film, and others. Ultimately, the “orphaned Jewish childhoods” (131) of filmmakers may be an inspiration, but there are surely universal layers that account for the readability of films for audiences at large.

Chapter 6 deals with representation of the Holocaust in animation, while the next chapter focuses on cosmopolitanism, looking at Andrei Khrzhanovskii's and Iurii Norshtein's debut films. Although the application of the term “retro” to their turn to the avant-garde raises questions, Balakirsky Katz offers a sound analysis of these films. The discussion of Norshtein's Tale of Tales in the following chapter sadly adds nothing new to existing readings of the film.

The conclusion explains the “personal taste” principle for the film selection and the desire to try out different approaches. This shows in the latter half of the study, when coherence falters, starting with the reading of Cheburashka. The mention here of Alexandre Alexeieff (128) as a director who made an advert for Jaffa (which he did, in 1939) while working at Soyuzmultfilm (which he did not, having emigrated to France in 1921) raises serious concerns.

Indeed, factual errors abound in this otherwise well-researched book: Starevich did leave Russia in 1919 (98), but Ptushko never did; “Stalin's death in 1954” (161) carries a delay; Disney's Snow White was made in 1937, not 1935 (5); we know Max Fleischer, not Fleisher (16); Mikhail Bakhtin, not Bakhtyn (190); and Kazimir, not Kazmir Malevich (192, 201). Apparently, the author has only basic Russian, and if there is a transliteration system, it is inconsistent to a degree that is unacceptable for an academic publication: Meerovich is also Meyerovich (45); we have prapusca instead of propiska (108); khodzhnik instead of khudozhnik (54); neizvestyuu-naake instead of neizvestnyi (120). The use of masculine endings for women's surnames is unconventional: Maya Turovsky (7), and Marina Kurchevsky (177).

Overall, this is a fine study of the contribution of Jewish artists and their role in animation. It traces how Jewish culture, but more importantly Jewish childhood experiences, fed into visual and verbal narratives in animation. Most importantly, the book traces the relevance of animation for sheltering Jewish artists.