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At the far edge of Baba Yaga's forest there lived a mean-spirited woman with her two ill-tempered daughters and her stepdaughter, Vasilisa. Read the first page
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This story is a nice departure from the standard 'bad witch' and 'helpless young girl' tales, where the little girl has to be rescued. Instead, this story features a resourceful Russian girl who manages to use her wits to thwart the witch Baba Yaga. Not only is this book a great antidote to the 'someday my prince will come' tales, but it stands on its own as a rich example of Russian culture and legend.
Baba Yaga is probably the most famous witch in the folklore of the world and certainly the one of whom the most stories are told. Russian folklore is filled with stories of the fearsome witch with the iron teeth, who is sometimes known as "Baba Yaga Kostianaya Noga" (Baba Yaga Boney Legs) because even though she has a ferocious appetite, as this story shows, she is as thin as a skeleton. Unlike the conventional witch who wears a hat and travels on a broomstick, Baba Yaga sails through the air sitting in a large mortar with her knees up against her chin, pushing against the floor of the forest with a pestle. When she appears a wild wind begins to blow and the spirits that often accompany here start to wail and shriek.
For children in Russia or pretty much anywhere in Eastern Europe the name of Baba Yaga is one to send shivers up the spine, so when Vasilisa's wicked stepmother contrives a reason to send our heroine into the forest to borrow a light from Baba Yaga, they know that this is not a good thing. At the start of this tale, retold by Marianna Mayer, young readers not yet familiar with the legendary Baba Yaga are told that humans are her favorite food and that few have ever survived a visit to her crooked hut made of human bones. However, they are also told that the story of this particular young girl and her encounter with Baba Yaga bears repeating. Vasilisa heads off into the forbidding forest, taking with her only her favorite doll, a token of the love of her real mother.
In addition to the luminous illustrations by K. Y. Craft, what makes "Baba Yaga and Vasilisa the Brave" so compelling is that it bespeaks a complexity long gone in terms of most children's stories today. For example, as she walks through the forest to Baba Yaga's house Vasilisa sees some different colored horsemen. Later on we learn who they are, but they do not play any real part in the story, they are just part of the rich tapestry of the tale. Of course is you are talking about rich tapestry that is a good description of Craft's artwork, which usually consists on each spread of a full page illustration, a nice little border design of animals in the forest, and a little design around the first capital letter of each page.
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