THE FLYING WITCH

Yolen crafts an original, updated tale from characters and elements found in traditional ones. A young girl falls out of her father’s turnip truck on the way to market, and it isn’t long before Baba Yaga sweeps down in a rickety flying mortar and pestle—“Whirrr. Whirr. Clunkety-clank”—to carry her off to the witch’s chicken-legged cottage. Before she can be plunked into the pot, however, the quick witted child suggests fattening her up with turnip soup—so off hies the witch to the market, where the child’s father quickly puts two and two together. Vagin ignores repeated references to a dark and tangled forest to create a tidy, well-lit woodland setting, but Baba Yaga, with her sharply hooked iron nose and long black fingernails, comes off as an entertaining blend of scary and comical. And in a concluding twist, the crone develops such a taste for turnip soup that she invites child and father to stay for dinner, then bids them farewell with a friendly wave. A good-humored remake, featuring a kinder, gentler witch than the general run of Baba Yaga tales. (Picture book/folktale. 7-9)