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GRANDMA CHICKENLEGS

Name: GRANDMA CHICKENLEGS
Author: Geraldine McCaughrean
ISBN: 1-57505-415-9

by Geraldine McCaughrean ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 1999

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The familiar tale of a child surviving a visit to Baba Yaga’s chicken-legged abode has never been told with more gusto. Dispatched on an errand to dreaded Grandma Chickenlegs’s house by her cruel stepmother (“a woman with eyes as sharp as needles and a soul as thin as a thread”), young Tatia escapes the witch three times, due to magic help and the advice of her beloved doll, Drooga. Using twisted perspectives and vigorously applied colors, Kemp creates a set of wild, garishly lit climactic scenes dominated by the grimacing, green-skinned granny—perfect counterpart to McCaughrean’s colorful prose style: “Around the garden, on four scratching, paltry poultry legs ran the rickety-rackety shack. Its fence was made from rattly bones.” Reunited in the end with her long-absent father, Tatia blows off her mother’s dying advice to “give and forgive,” triumphantly turning stepmother and stepsisters out on the street in their underclothes. This is a rousing alternative to Nonny Hogrogian’s subdued Vasilisa the Beautiful (1970) or Mariana Mayer’s coldly elegant Baba Yaga and Vasilisa the Brave (1994). (Picture book/folklore. 7-10)

Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1999

ISBN: 1-57505-415-9

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Carolrhoda

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1999

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL SCIENCES

- BOOK REVIEW
A TALE OF TWO DRAGONS
by Geraldine McCaughrean ; illustrated by Peter Malone

- BOOK REVIEW
WHERE THE WORLD ENDS
by Geraldine McCaughrean

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GLORIOUS ADVENTURES OF THE SUNSHINE QUEEN
by Geraldine McCaughrean

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THE GREEN MIST

adapted by Marcia Sewall & illustrated by Marcia Sewall ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1999

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A beguiling retelling of a 19th-century Lincolnshire tale that fairly dances with an impatience to be read aloud. Mouth-filling words dot this story, the context making them easily understood while taking away none of their mystery. Bogles and other horrid things live in the cracks and cinders and sleep in the fields in the old times, and at darkling every night folk walk round their houses with lights in their hands to keep the mischancy beings away. In autumn, “they sang hush-a-bye songs in the fields, for the earth was tired” and they fear the winters when the bogles have nothing to do but make mischief. As the year turns, they wake the earth from its sleeping each spring, and welcome the green mist that brings new growth. In one family, a child pines, longing for the green mist to return with the sun. Through the long winter she grows so weak her mother must carry her to the doorsill, so she can crumble the bread and salt onto the earth to hail the spring. The green mist comes, scented with herbs and green as grass, and the child thrives, once again “running about like a sunbeam.” The green, gold, brown, and gray of the watercolors show fields and haycocks, knobby-kneed children and raw-boned elders, a counterpoint to the rich text. (Picture book. 4-9)

Pub Date: March 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-395-90013-1

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL SCIENCES

- BOOK REVIEW
JAMES TOWNE
by Marcia Sewall & illustrated by Marcia Sewall

- BOOK REVIEW
MADAKET MILLIE
by Frances Ward Weller & illustrated by Marcia Sewall

- BOOK REVIEW
DADDY DOESN'T HAVE TO BE A GIANT ANYMORE
by Jane Resh Thomas & illustrated by Marcia Sewall

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KING MIDAS

adapted by John Warren Stewig ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 15, 1999

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A polished, poignant retelling of a familiar legend and its worthy moral, that some things in life are worth more than their weight in gold. Greed drives King Midas when a mysterious stranger decides to grant his wish for a golden touch; too late the king realizes that everything he touches—roses, bed sheets, food, coffee, his beloved daughter—turns to cold yellow metal. By the time the stranger reappears, Midas is more than ready to return his gift. Rayyan’s illustrations create a rich, busy background for the events; harpies, sphinxes, and satyrs scurry around, while careful observers will spot Icarus plunging toward the earth at the same moment that Midas transforms his daughter, Marygold. Such wonderful details bind the art and the text with perfect alacrity, ensuring that this book will not be long on the shelves. (Picture book/folkore. 5-9)