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A review by lisavegan
Babushka Baba Yaga by Patricia Polacco
3.0
Darn! I just hate books where wolves are made out (as they are in many fairy tales, and this is a sort of fairy tale) as aggressive against humans and as vicious/bad/evil. Unfortunately, that’s what happens in a part of this story.
The rest of the message is lovely, especially knowing from reading other Polacco books, how much she treasured her relationship with her grandmother.
This is the story of a “creature” who is loathed and feared, yet who is actually lonely and has strong maternal feelings and yearns for a relationship with a child. She finds a way to be a surrogate grandmother. The story’s meaning is captured by a line toward the end of the book: “Those who judge one another on what they hear or see, and not on what they know of them in their hearts, are fools indeed!”
I appreciated how Russian words are interspersed throughout the story, and the illustrations were very special: intricate and colorful and in an interesting style. My favorite illustration was the picture of Babushka Baba Yaga planning her makeover, dipping her finger in the water, surrounded by the forest animals and the borrowed real babushkas’ clothes.
Polacco dedicates this book to the fifty American school children who went to art camp with her in Russia in the summer of 1989; that must have been an enriching experience for all.
The rest of the message is lovely, especially knowing from reading other Polacco books, how much she treasured her relationship with her grandmother.
This is the story of a “creature” who is loathed and feared, yet who is actually lonely and has strong maternal feelings and yearns for a relationship with a child. She finds a way to be a surrogate grandmother. The story’s meaning is captured by a line toward the end of the book: “Those who judge one another on what they hear or see, and not on what they know of them in their hearts, are fools indeed!”
I appreciated how Russian words are interspersed throughout the story, and the illustrations were very special: intricate and colorful and in an interesting style. My favorite illustration was the picture of Babushka Baba Yaga planning her makeover, dipping her finger in the water, surrounded by the forest animals and the borrowed real babushkas’ clothes.
Polacco dedicates this book to the fifty American school children who went to art camp with her in Russia in the summer of 1989; that must have been an enriching experience for all.