The House with Chicken Legs

Gr 4–6—The wise witch of Slavic folklore, Baba Yaga, is the conduit for this coming-of-age adventure where both the living and the dead teach timely lessons about love and loss. Twelve-year-old narrator Marinka has reluctantly accepted her destiny: to learn the duties of a guardian (aka "yaga") who guides the dead through the Gate to a peaceful afterlife. Although she loves learning from her grandmother, Baba, and living in the strange house with chicken legs, she is tired of constantly picking up and moving, never making a friend among the living. When she stubbornly enacts her own plan for her future, Marinka is faced with choices that have permanent consequences. Anderson has written a plucky, compassionate heroiner in Marinka. She is completely relatable as she struggles with the desire for independence while knowing she has much to learn from her elders, peers, pets, and, surprisingly, her dwelling. The story brings Neil Gaiman's Coraline and the work of Tim Burton to mind: the first scene opens with Marinka building a fence of human femur bones with delicately balanced skulls atop.