When Ivan the Fool meets Baba Yaga, the witch of Russian folklore fame, on a day that has begun badly for her, he outwits her by making dirt soup, getting a fine, fat pig in the bargain.
A Perfect Pork Stew
Europe
Materials from Europe
Luba and the Wren
In this variation on the story of “The Fisherman and His Wife,” a young Ukrainian girl must repeatedly return to the wren she has rescued to relay her parents’ increasingly greedy demands.
Rechenka’s Eggs
An injured goose rescued by Babushka, having broken the painted eggs intended for the Easter Festival in Moscva, lays thirteen marvelously colored eggs to replace them, then leaves behind one final miracle in egg form before returning to her own kind.
Babushka Baba Yaga
The villagers are afraid of her, so the legendary Baba Yaga disguises herself as an old woman in order to know the joys of being a grandmother.
The Language of Birds
A retelling of the Russian tale about a wealthy merchant’s younger son who proves his worth in an unusual way.
Russian Girl: Life in an Old Russian Town
Text and photographs describe the life of a nine-year-old girl and her family in the small Russian city of Suzdal.
#1 (One)
When Six, a pink armadillo with nine green siblings, brags that he is “#1” in everything, his family expresses a different opinion.
The Impudent Rooster
Using his amazing swallowing ability, a rooster foils the evil plans of a greedy nobleman and brings back riches to his poor master.
Stone Men
Grandma tells Arnie how a poor peddler saved a village from being destroyed by soldiers with the help of the stone men he always made on his journeys.
Noah and the Devil: A Legend of Noah’s Ark from Romania
In this Romanian folk version of the Noah story, getting the animals to march, two by two, onto the ark is the easy part–it was persuading his wife to come aboard that gave Noah a headache. And when he snapped, “Oh, you devil, come in!,” that gave the Devil himself just the invitation he needed. Once aboard, in the shape of a mouse, the Devil gnawed a hole in the ark, to sink it beneath the flood.