Beautiful almost pointillisty drawings but I just feel bad for kids like Emmett where they're like "she's definitely a good witch" and then she's Baba Yaga and they get excited about the happy world in her egg and then it's a lure to get the kid in to slave for a thousand years. More and more I think it's fine when stories--kid stories, but even grown-up stories too--are just nice. ( )

When Marushka's mother sends her to the market to buy a "perfect" egg for their Easter bread, the young girl finds herself tricked and imprisoned by the evil witch Baba Yaga, who offers her a beautifully decorated blue egg lit up by a mysterious inner light. Sucked into the world inside the egg, Marushka becomes Baba Yaga's servant, cleaning her scaled house, Izbushka, and caring for Katya the cat, Kronus the crow, and Ilya the bear. Determined to escape, clever Marushka asks her captor a series of questions, eventually freeing both herself and her animal companions...

Although it incorporates some well-known themes and characters from Russian folklore, from the three animal companions to Baba Yaga the witch, I'm not entirely sure that Marushka's Egg is a traditional folktale so much as a creative adaptation. Whatever the case may be, it is a lovely picture-book with an engaging heroine. The beautiful tempera and watercolor illustrations by Joanna Wezyk are lushly colorful, and give the book an admirably whimsical quality. This is an Easter tale that young readers will enjoy, and I thank my friend Kathryn for recommending it! ( )

This is a classic folktale, but that being said, it is very much in the tradition of the original Grimm tales, in that it is dark and terrifying, and intended to convey a moral. Marushka, a lovely little girl, is sucked into a world inside an egg, and imprisoned by an evil witch, Baba Yaga, who forces her to be her servant under constant threat of death. Marushka befriends the witch's pets, and together they manage to escape the cruel and selfish Baba Yaga. The illustrations are brightly colored tempera and watercolor with a speckled look, that do not match the dark tone of the text. Too frightening for young children, it is still an interesting book for older children, ages 8-10. ( )