Baba Yaga by An Leysen

Fairy tales are often gruesome. This is one of the most gruesome in my opinion. But the An Leysen illustrations were so soft and gentle that I decided it might temper the less than pleasant story line. 

Here is Baba Yaga. Who looks quite pleasant and quirky in this picture. 

Do not be deceived. She is a nasty bit of goods. 

This is a fuzzy picture, but a perfectly sweet picture too of Olga and her dad. 

Olga's mother died ages ago, so it is just her and her dad and her special doll that her mother gave her. 

Enter the evil stepmother. Who happens to be Baba Yaga's sister. 

This woman is horrid. She makes Cinderella's stepmother look merely annoying. 

Evil stepmother sends Olga to fetch a needle from Auntie Baba Yaga hoping that Baba Yaga will make a meal of Olga and evil stepmother will be rid of Olga for ever. 

I mean seriously. What is with fairy tales and cannabalism? 

Baba Yaga's house on chicken legs. Because... why not?

Baba Yaga's sad maid who has not been eaten. Baba Yaga only likes to eat children. 

Baba Yaga and her toad trying to lure Olga into carelessness. 

She asks the maid to give Olga a bath. A nice HOT bath--wink, wink; ie boil the child. 

Since Olga had been nice to the maid, the maid fills the tub with a sieve, which means it doesn't actually get filled. 

Throughout this ordeal, Olga's special doll from her mother guides her through her troubles, telling her to tell the maid to fill the bath with the sieve, befriend the evil cat, etc. 

I think the doll was probably napping when Olga was heading to Baba Yaga's house. Because otherwise it should have been yelling to turn around, head to the high country, go anywhere but where you are going. 

But still. Magical dolls are useful for getting out of trouble even if they are not good at warning of trouble. 

Olga creates a river to keep Baba Yaga away (Baba Yaga can't cross water) so Baba Yaga brings her cow to drink the entire river dry. 

But I like the cow's headgear.

And like all fairy tales, the father realizes he married a horrendous woman and the stepmother disappears. 

And Olga and her father live happily ever after, reading books. Because books are an important part of happily ever after. 

The Mitten by Alvin Tressalt & Illustrated by Yaroslava

This book is based on the same folktale that Jan Brett's The Mitten is based on. So the story line is pretty much identical. However, the cast of characters is different. I think I might like this version better. The characters are spicier. 

I wondered about that. Are Jan Brett's characters just too good? Is that why I am not as interested in them? Hmm.... Something to ponder. 

I adore Jan Brett's illustrations, but I love these colors. And I like tiny little illustrations. 

Since this is a vintage book, the colored pages alternate with a mostly monochromatic layout. 

This little boy was in the woods picking up sticks for firewood when he lost his mitten. 

Now how a boy could do this

on the coldest day of winter

I'll never know, but that's the way 

my grandfather tells the story. 

Inserting a little reality. 

A little mouse notices the cozy mitten.

Unfortunate for the mouse's solitude, everyone else notices the mitten too. 

A frog (who should be sound asleep under the ice if he was any kind of proper frog.)

An adorable owl.

A bunny in a fabulous red coat.

This bear has a super vest. 

And do you see the animals in the mitten? They include a wild boar and wolf. 

The bear was just about too much for the mitten's seam. 

And then, along comes granny cricket. 

The last straw!

Unlike Jan Brett's version, the boy retraced his steps to find his ripped apart mitten. 

And he thought he saw a little mouse scurrying away

 with a bit of red wool perched on her head. 

It looked very much like the lining

 from the thumb of his missing mitten. 

The Story of the Snow Children by Sibylle von Olfers

(I really wanted my amaryllis in the picture. It didn't work out quite as well as it could have, but my amaryllis is very red and sunshiney!)

This is an incredibly adorable, charming, and sweet book that you will like much better than your children will. It really is. I bought this a few years ago as a treat for my kids. I think we have read it once. It is so cute!! But... the story is not as delightful and entertaining as the pictures are. It is markedly a product of it's time, 1905. Poppy, the heroine really does nothing, but go along with what others tell her to do until she gets too tired and cries. She is then carried home. It is realistic in a way that children are always carted around and told what to do, but... we like our heroines to have a little pep. 

But it is so sweet.  

See how cute it is? Adorable!

Poppy is left all alone as her mother just stepped out for something. She sees snowflakes dancing and playing in the garden, calling for her to come out and see them. 

The snowflakes call for Swirly-wind to bring her sledge to carry Poppy to the Snow Queen's castle. 

The snow queen and the royal princess. While I think those little snowflake babies are adorable, the sameness of them all is vaguely disturbing to me. Snowflakes are delightfully different, not clones.

They have a lovely meal with snowman waiters. Which are vaguely disturbing to me as well. Not sure why. Something about the humanness of their non-humanness looks like they are men in puffy white suits. Who may have a sinister reason for hiding inside snowmen suits...

I am weird. Pay no attention to me. 

Finally, Poppy has had too much. 

Her ears and eyes had had enough and her body ached. Now all she wanted was to go home.

Over-stimulation. That will do it every time. 

The Snow Queen's snowman drives Poppy home where her mother is waiting to welcome her home and hear about her adventure.

Admittedly, I am not a fantasy fanatic, but I typically love sweet fairy stories like this. However, this one just doesn't do it for me or my kids. I like the pictures better than the story. 

Clara by Emily Arnold McCully

An orange eating, world traveling rhino. Need I say more?

Please pretend to ignore that I used a hippo in the pictures, not a rhino. Thank you. It makes me feel better.

(They were both grey....)

This true story starts out in India, when a baby rhino wanders into afternoon tea. If that sentence doesn't captivate you, I just don't know about you.

The visiting Captain Van der Meer is enchanted and takes Clara the rhino home to Holland.

He continues to be enchanted, even when she requires a vast amount of feeding and shows a predilection for oranges, an expensive taste to feed.

On the sea journey they become great pals. Isn't this picture lovely? I like Emily Arnold McCully's illustrations.

Admiring each other.

Captain Van der Meer is rather poor and Clara is rather expensive, so they begin to tour Europe, earning money for her upkeep.

Rafting the Rhine.

Their journey's through Europe.

King Louis XV wanted to buy him for his exotic animal park at Versailles. But Captain Van der Meer said Clara was worth $100,000 in gold, so King Louis changes his mind. 

Which relieves the Captain's mind exceedingly.

All this traveling has started rhino-mania across Europe. Artists, musicians, poets, all flock to Clara and try to capture a little of her quiet majesty. Ladies adopted a hairstyle a la rhinoceros.

But then, the time came when Clara was no longer interested in her baskets of oranges. And the Captain knows she is dying. 

"Dear Clarakin," he murmurred, "you've been the greatest trouper and my truest friend."

For a moment, Clara seemed to be remembering it all. And then she shut her eyes.

Such a sweet book. In the author's afterward, she mentions that we don't see Clara's life as being good for her, but she lived longer than rhino's typically do in the wild and that this was centuries before people understood how important it was for wild animals to be wild. 

The Morning Chair by Barbara M. Joose & Illus by Marcia Sewall

We love this book so much!!! Originally I wanted to read it because it is written by Barbara M. Joosse, who also wrote Mama, Do You Love Me?  But then I saw the illustrations, in a soft, graphic style and primary colors and I loved it even more. And the story...! 

This story is based on Barbara Joose's husband's own story. It is rather sweet to think of Bram being a real little boy, adjusting to America. 

Bram lives in a seaside town in Holland. 

The first part of the book explores all the things he loved in Holland, all the little rituals he enjoyed as a boy--raw herrings on Sunday walks with his father, his own bed with a sweet smelling straw mattress and his grandmother's quilt.

And most especially, the morning chair. A special chair he and his mother snuggle in to discuss life while she drinks tea from her blue china teapot and he drinks from his tiny little cup. 

Isn't that delightful? Elsie, our four year old, glommed onto the idea of a morning chair and often asks for a morning chair snuggle. 

Oh my heart!

But things were not easy in Holland after WWII. So Bram's family emigrated to America

One thing I found interesting was the family's preoccupation with green olives as symbols of American-ism. Bram hates green olives, but his father tells him all Americans eat green olives, so he better eat them. 

"But I am not American. I am Dutch," said Bram. 

National identities were not something to just shrug off, to Bram.

It is hard starting out in a new country. Their furniture takes longer to get to them, so they have a strange and empty apartment to live in. And everything is so new and confusing that Mama doesn't have a lot of time for talking to Bram. He feels everything moves too fast and he is lonely for his old life. On Sundays though, they go for walks in the park. And instead of raw herring, they get hotdogs. Similarities, mixed in with the differences. 

Finally the furniture crates arrive. That night, Bram sleeps on his sweet smelling straw mattress under his grandmother quilt. And in the morning...

There is the blue and white teapot. And the morning chair.

"Bram," Mama said, "Do you know what time it is?"

Bram pulled his breath in from the soles of his feet, and let it out slowing.

"It's time for the morning chair," he said. He crawled into the morning chair, jiggled his legs, and waited.

Isn't that a great description of a little boy getting his heart's desire? 

Mama makes Dutch cookies and they talk about things. All the good and bad of America. Mama agrees with Bram that green olives are rather icky and there is room enough in America for people who do not like green olives. 

They both agree that policemen on horseback were worth coming to America to see.

Their cozy, snug apartment with all their Holland things. Bram feels such enormous relief at being among his things again. As a "thing" person, I can understand his relief. There are just certain things that represent the best of life. Odd little things. My certain blue oatmeal bowl, my special work bag, my particular kind of peanut butter, my flannel sheets... 

I try to not be materialistic, but I do sympathize with Bram.