I Wish I Didn't Have to Tell You This
“With this book Eugene Yelchin joins the community of author / artists who have dared to examine their troubling pasts with honesty, insight and cleansing humor.”
—David Small, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Stiches: A Memoir
“A bold and unblinking memoir . . . Timely, poignant, and unsettling.”
—M. T. Anderson, author of National Book Award winner The Astonishing Life of Octavian Mothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party
“By turns heartbreaking and gut-wrenching . . . Its resonance is inescapable. So is its beauty.”
—Candace Fleming, author of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner The Family Romanov
by Eugene Yelchin
Candlewick Press © 2025
Elizabeth Bicknell, editor
Amy Berniker, art director
Reviews/Press
STARRED REVIEW “An exceptional work: atmospherically illustrated and underpinned by strong but restrained feelings.”
— Kirkus Reviews
STARRED REVIEW “A detailed, poignant, and gut-wrenchingly relevant elucidation of life under a government whose autocratic practices are particularly oppressive for the humanitarian pursuits of art and love. This is in no small part due to award-magnet Yelchin’s art, the gray palette capturing the never-quite-numbing-enough psychological oppression while the limber, idiosyncratic figures—along with the author’s indispensable humor—hold tight to the humanity struggling beneath it all.”
—Booklist
STARRED REVIEW “A compelling story, and Yelchin tells it with grace, sympathy for his younger self, and a clear pain that lingers. . . The powerful intersection of art style and carefully chosen text is especially stunning. . . The illustrations are ultimately a demonstration of his considerable talents and make it clear why he felt compelled to develop his art even though it put him at significant risk.”
—Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books
STARRED REVIEW “This political and artistic coming-of-age story has plenty of broadly relatable moments of indecision, stubbornness, frustration, and (often dark) humor, as its young subject figures out who he is, where he wants to be, and how to get there.”
—The Horn Book Reviews