Baba Yaga & the Wise Doll

Oram, Hiawyn. Baba Yaga & the Wise Doll. New York : Dutton Children's Books, 1998.


Plot: Too Nice, desperate for respect from her peers, is forced to approach Baba Yaga, a witch eager to remind the girl of her place. The witch forces Too Nice to perform a series of impossible tasks or be eaten. Yet, through the gift of a doll, Too Nice succeeds and even gains the witch's favor.

Genre: Fairy Tales, Picture Books

Reading Level: Ages 9-12.

Similar Titles: Vasilisa the Beautiful, The Black Swans, Mossycoat

Personal Thoughts: The book retells the Russian folktale, Vasilisa the Beautiful, in a child-friendly manner. The original is a bit like a Cinderella story, except instead of going to the ball, the heroine visits a witch that unexpectedly takes out the stepmother and stepsisters in possibly one of the most over-the-top sequences in fairy tale history (I am not going to give it away. Look it up.). The retelling is pretty well illustrated and executed, but the last sentence of the story "And Too Nice - not surprisingly after all she'd been through - stopped being too nice and become...well...Just About Right" seems really...well...pointless. I understand the reasoning behind including it. Many storytellers wish to show how a character grows through the conflicts of the story. However, the tale never really takes her through the process of change, so it is unseemly abrupt. Also, it seems to imply too nice is a negative without really explaining why. Is Oram trying to caution readers about being courteous? Submissive? Generous? Goody-goody? Individualistic? Unaccepted? Unfortunately, readers typically consider the last part of a story to be the most meaningful, and Oram ends the story on a blurry commentary on ideal behavior.