by Kelly Pickerill
I’ve been charmed by Gregory Macguire’s new middle grade novel, Egg & Spoon. Though that’s its official classification I hesitate to call it middle grade; yes, it’s a fairy tale set in Imperial Russia, with two tween girl heroines and the inimitable, grandmotherly yet dangerous witch Baba Yaga as another of its main players. Its themes are the usual middle grade fare of being content with what you have and that anyone can be a hero. But it has much to offer grown-up readers, too. Much of the subtlety of the humor won’t be appreciated by younger readers, especially Baba Yaga’s references to modern culture (her indeterminate age has apparently endowed her with timelessness), and the narrator’s (a blind old monk in a prison tower) omniscient digressions from the story.
Aristocratic yet spoiled Ekaterina encounters the young and peasant Elena when the train taking her to St Petersburg is forced to stop in Elena’s poverty-stricken village. A mishap causes them to switch places as the train resumes its journey, and Elena finds herself a stowaway on the train. Sure that the mistake will be discovered and the train will return to pick her up, Ekaterina begins to walk along the tracks, only to be swept into the clutches of the legendary witch, Baba Yaga. Ekaterina doesn’t know what to make of the ramblings of the witch—of the firebird and its magical tail feathers, of the ice dragon whose slumber in the north is said to be responsible for the winter season’s frost—she barely believes in the witch herself. But Baba Yaga knows something is wrong with the balance of magic in the world, because the snow is melting and winter is thawing too soon. Everyone heads to St Petersburg, Baba Yaga to warn the Tsar of the problems, Ekaterina to return to her privileged life, and Elena hoping to get help for her suffering family.
The elements of Maguire’s beloved Wizard of Oz retelling, Wicked, may be more familiar to readers than a world of firebirds and thousand-year-old Russian witches, yet Egg & Spoon connects us to a tradition that is familiar in a different way, and is as layered as Elena’s matryoshka doll—the bonds of friendship, the love of family, the precocious heroism of youth. An intricately crafted Faberge egg begins this adventure, and two girls from very different worlds must find common ground in order to end it.
Egg & Spoon is a selection of our Oz First Editions Club. A limited number signed first editions are still available.
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