“In the shadow of King Vaslav’s Palace was a marvelous garden, and in the middle of that garden stood a tree that grew apples of solid gold, each one as dazzling as the sun.”Someone is stealing the king’s famous golden apples, and the culprit must be found. The palace gardener spots the luminous Firebird snatching the apples in the night. The king’s two oldest sons are sent to capture it but fail. So Ivan, the youngest son, must go on the dangerous quest, befriending a gray wolf, winning both the Firebird and the heart of the beautiful Princess Helen. Saviour Pirotta’s powerful retelling of this classic folktale plumbs the heart of human fears, courage, and love.
Russia
Materials from Russia
Babushka’s Mother Goose
Presents a collection of traditional rhymes, rewritten to feature Russian characters and scenes.
Because . . .
A young boy who lives with his grandmother is terribly embarrassed by her behavior at first, but comes to realize that she is not just having fun, she has a reason for each strange action.
Folk Tales From The Soviet Union: The Caucasus
Grandma Chickenlegs
In this variation of the traditional Baba Yaga story, a young girl must rely on the advice of her dead mother and her special doll when her wicked stepmother sends her to get a needle from Grandma Chickenlegs.
The Girl Who Wanted To Hunt: A Siberian Tale
A young girl uses her skills as a hunter to avenge her father’s death and to escape her evil stepmother.
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.
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.
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.
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.