About the book: 2016 / Kumutkan is an inexperienced baby Baikal seal, which is in danger from everywhere. And the main character of the story, thirteen-year-old Maxim, looks like a kumutkan when his mother, leaving him, goes to Buddhist teachings. At the same time, her half-sister Ayuna calls herself a hereditary black shaman, and her own grandfather, a former polar explorer, apparently purposely catches seals for some terrible experiments... The story by Evgeniy Rudashevsky is full of contrasts, it talks about the life of modern Irkutsk teenagers, about the multinational the color of Siberian courtyards - and captivates the reader in such a way that he can emerge from it only by turning the last page. Childhood as a time of adventure, the courtyard as a battlefield, exoticism that has become commonplace for the heroes - all this is familiar from Soviet classics, be it “Chick’s Childhood” or “The Bronze Bird”. Only Iskander’s hooligans will never call their hut “Minas Morgul”, and the fishermen’s pioneers will not delve into their own feelings, search the Internet for the address of their missing father. Young writer Evgeny Rudashevsky (born in 1987), winner of the “Kniguru” and other awards, according to -journalistically scrupulous: if in the book “Hello, my brother Bzou!” Abkhazian life is carefully depicted, then in the story “Where Kumutkan Goes” Buryat folklore and the habits of Baikal seals are described with great attention to detail. The author himself worked for several years in the Irkutsk nerpinarium and writes about these amazing animals with love and knowledge. But more important than rare facts is a rich, living language: continuing the best traditions of teenage prose, Evgeniy Rudashevsky’s text absorbs many modern realities, turning the abundant pop cultural litter into literature that has the right to a long life. And the expressive illustrations of Pyotr Zakharov make the book a publication worthy of adding to the library of the most demanding reader.