Review: Finding Baba Yaga

Finding Baba Yaga by Jane Yolen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Quick read for my subway ride while I figured out how to download my next book. I'm sometimes skeptical of books in verse, and the "chapters" in this one were a bit hit-or-miss for me. Most were pretty much there to move the plot along, so not a ton of introspection from the main character.

Things get more fairy-tale-like as the book progresses, though with clever ties to the modern world to ground the reader--or perhaps confuse them? It's a little too fantasy to be magical realism. I would have liked a little more about the Baba, and perhaps a few more realistic anchors in the almost full-on-fantasy climax. But still, enjoyable with some real gems in the text.

Anyway, it's such a short book that I'd recommend you take a little time to read it, if you're curious.

Quote Round-Up

p. 21) Sometimes a bad word
is punctuation to a bad day.

p. 23) Angels are always clean.
Through the bubbles I ask:
What about feather mites?

p. 48) This is a place of correspondence,
perpetual conversation,
letters written in the air.

River asks a question,
rock asks one back.
Aspen asks birch, birch asks
bracken, bracken asks earth,
earth holds all answers
tight against her breast.

p. 85) Cauldron: I just love this whole poem/chapter for subverting fairy tale tropes with modern conveniences, but also pointing out both that there are magical things in our mundane world, and that things we now consider magical may once have been mundane.

p. 103) ...both so engrossed
in looking at themselves
looking at themselves.
Strikes me as pretty relevant to our social media-obsessed culture. Just thinking about myself, aren't we always eager to see who has been looking at our posts, and aren't we then more likely to look at and respond to theirs in return? We appreciate people who appreciate us. This can be a good and important thing, but the way it's happening in the Baba's house is much like some unhealthy relationships that might form either because of social media or in young people, like Vasilisa.

p. 119) Like the piano player, I have memory
in my fingertips. I watch words spill out
creating worlds, inventing colors,
bridging generations.
...
...the memory of creation is here
in my fingers, as they hold fast
to the feather weight
of Baba Yaga's pen.

p. 125) Baba Yaga swears at objects...
... She doesn't swear at people.
That's what spells are for, she says
as she teaches me the words.
I've never heard such a good summary of my personal philosophy of swearing. It always seemed kind of stupid, to not mind swearing in most cases when it's at objects or as grammar, but to be deeply uncomfortable when swearing becomes weaponized in a specific attack. But hat's how I feel, and I guess I might not actually be alone.

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