I couldn’t put The House with Chicken Legs down. I found it to be such a unique, enchanting story, the type I aspire to write. It left my inner child bursting with joy.
Based on Baba Yaga, a supernatural being from Slavic folklore, the House with Chicken Legs focuses, as many fairy tales do, on a young girl who lives with her Grandma. The difference is that this young girl, Marinka are stewards to the dead, responsible for leading them through a gate and back to the stars. Their house has chicken legs, getting up to run about and move at its will.
The writing is, of course, simplistic, given this is a middle-grade book, but Anderson still manages to explores themes like death in a way that I found touching. A+++.