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Title: Let Baba Yaga be evil, please!
Review: I am seriously conflicted about this book. No doubt it is well written and excellently illustrated. My problem is with the basic story and the "revisionism" of Baba Yaga's place in the world which seems indicative of a general trend to root all evil out of children's literature. In my opinion evil and fear are important elements in fairy tales and they prepare children to deal with the real world. Classic (pre-Grimm) fairy tales were incredibly graphic and scary (see Marina Warner's "From the Beast to the Blonde"). Baba Yaga has a definite and clear place in Slavic fairy tales--she is the main "evildoer" who eats children, etc. Let her be that!
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