The House with Chicken Legs

by Sophie Anderson

Key information 

Author: Sophie Anderson

Illustrator: Melissa Castrilon and Elisa Paganelli

Release Date: 3rd May 2018

Book type: Chapter, 336 pages, paperback

Star rating: ★★★★

Reader level: Growing reader (8+) / Shared read (7+) [Note: Contains Russian words]

Overview

The House with Chicken Legs follows the story of a young girl Marinka who is destined to be the next Guardian to the afterlife. Like her grandmother, Baba, Marinka must devote her life to being a Yaga and welcoming into her home before they return to the stars. However, Marinka's home is not like others'... it has chicken legs! When the time is right, the house runs across the world to a new location, ready to welcome those who have recently passed away. 

Despite her unique home, Marinka longs to be an ordinary child and wishes to step beyond her front steps into the real world. She envies those who have friends, go to school and are free to live a normal life but her grandmother is adamant that she should stay at home. Slowly, Marinka's desire to leave the house and make friends becomes too much, and she decides to break every rule that Baba has put in place to reach freedom. 

Over the next few days, Marinka has a taste of what it is like to have friends and realises that there is more to life than being a Guardian to the afterlife. Unfortunately, she lets her desires interfere with her morals and she ends up hiding the ghost of a young girl from her grandmother and the gateway to the afterlife. Despite the risk of her new friend becoming lost in the universe forever, Marinka continues to do what she can to keep her first friend hidden. However, during a secret trip to the beach, she notices that she too cannot stray far from the house and soon learns from Baba that she too became a ghost when she died in a house fire along with her parents.

Seeing the damage caused to her friend, Marinka agrees to allow the ghost to return to the stars. However due to her time spent with Marinka, the ghost is unable to find her way back to the stars and therefore Baba enters the gateway to guide her, never to return. Marinka is beside herself with anger and begins to treat the house badly and refuses to guide the ghosts that show up at her door. This sparks a chain of devastating events, leading to the destruction of her home and a threat to the other Yagas across the world. Marinka refuses to believe that her Baba will not return and becomes set on the idea of passing through the gateway herself to bring Baba home. 

The final chapters of the story see Marinka experience the world for what it truly is - a place of both beauty and ugliness. She begins to understand the importance of her role as guardian and eventually accepts the help of an Ancient Yaga to fix her home and understand who she truly wants to be. 

Vocabulary

This book contains lots of great tier 2 vocabulary for explicit teaching. 

Tier 3 language centers heavily around Russian culture and language.

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