The House With Chicken Legs

by Sophie Anderson

The House with Chicken Legs by Sophie Anderson is a fantasy book ideal for the tween age group (9-12, approx), especially kids with a taste for the macabre. It’s 300+ pages in length and opens with the narrator, Marinka, making a fence out of bones and skulls. Her granny is a guardian between this world and the next, and they move from place to isolated place. ‘I wish my family was a normal family, too,’ says Marinka.

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“This is about a girl who is betwixt and between. Marinka lives with her grandmother, Baba Yaga, whose job is to usher the dead back to the stars. So the dead come every night to the house with chicken legs, and the grandmother welcomes them and cooks for them, and then guides them through the doorway so that they will once again be part of the stars. I found the book very, very moving, because as part of the ritual of death, Baba Yaga asks them, “What are you taking to the stars? What has been meaningful to you in your life?” – which is quite a profound and big question. What did you gain from your life here? She’s trying to make a celebration of something that was meaningful in your life on Earth, before you become part of the universe.” Read more...

Novels Based on Mythological Retellings

Francesca Simon, Children's Author

The book, according to the author

“Baba Yaga is a character from Slavic folklore: a bony-legged, iron-toothed, long-nosed old hag who lives in a house with chicken legs deep in the forest. She is so linked to her house that in some stories they have grown together and become one being.”

Who is Baba Yaga, from Sophie Anderson's blog, October 6th, 2017