Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Researching Baba Yaga has long been one of my pastimes as I just find her fascinating. This book is a great collection of stories that feature her, whether as a main or side character, and is a great place to go if you are interested more in reading the fairytales themselves rather than a deep dive analysis. That isn't to say that this book does not have that. I loved the introduction and it included references to many other sources that can provide a more in depth look at Baba Yaga if that is what you are looking for. I feel that this collection is a great place to start with your research!

Baba Yaga has always been one of my favorite Russian folklore characters. I guess I have a weakness for a strong woman who plays no favorites and is beholden to nobody but herself. This book starts out with an introduction on the folklore and history of Baba Yaga and her roots. She appears to have gone by other names in other parts of Eastern Europe, but the core character is still the same. The book is heavily illustrated, which makes it a delight along with the easy writing. Until I had purchased this book, I had no idea she was still such a potent and popular character. Much of the book is taken up with the many stories in which Baba Yaga plays a role in determining the success of someone on a quest. This book is a great anthology of Baba Yaga lore, artwork and history. I only wish I'd found it sooner.

Maybe we are not supposed to love Baba Yaga as much as we do. This book has a great intro to the Russian-eating witch of the east & her importance in Russian faerie tales. It has beautiful artwork which, as others have pointed out, could have been reproduced larger. And the tales are wonderfully told. I read them out loud. They are simply delightful.

I wanted this book because I remember being read Baba Yaga stories from as a small child from a book that was a gift from my paternal grandfather, who was a 'Wend of Texas.' Turns out Baba Yaga was part of Wendish folklore. The matriarchal aspect of the stories is fascinating and a nice change from the more typical Prince Charming type fairy tales.

This is a beautiful book! If you have any interest in Baba Yaga or Russian folklore this is a must have. It also appealed to the inner comic book nerd in me. This is a very useful book for my classroom. It has some great stories and some very gory tales for older kids.

This is an important collection of folktales, many of which should be familiar to the Slavic folklore enthusiast. I appreciate its having introduced the oeuvres of numerous artists, some of them quite unfamiliar. Some of the stories' plot lines seem rather more lightweight than I remember, but that could due purely to my having been exposed to so many variants from so many independent language groups, I suppose. Or I could be mixing in subplots treating this bogatyr or that one from the bylini. And, now, for my major reservation: What's up with the illustrations? Why are they so darned tiny? No kidding, it looks like the printer went out of his way to make the illustrations unreasonably small. I mean, he goes out of his way to reserve an entire page for a picture, then reproduces the picture as, like, a four-by-four. This is so anticlimactic--shoot, the book is already a delight to behold, printed on first-class paper--that one really, really feels cheated, particularly after having laid out over forty bucks.

This book is not just the stories, but the art, history and culture of Baba Yaga! It arrived in a timely manner and in excellent condition. Totally amazing!

Bought this for my mom's birthday and she loves it! There are a lot of unique Baba Yaga stories in it that she's never read before. :)

Plentiful pictures from a variety of sources, always properly accredited. Plentiful stories, with notes on translation issues. A great deal of information on the characters, alternative versions, sources and other background information. If you're only going to get one Baba Yaga collection, this is the one to get. Nicely bound on high-quality paper, too.

Oh this is a wonderful book. The illustrations, the texts ( even if the same stories are repeated few times. If you let those stories take you, you can be lucky an of to have a glance at Baba Yaga. Or she might even visit and whisper you some advice...

Love the tales!

This is an extremely interesting and unique book that includes translations that can be hard to find. The collection of images is also very unique. The trouble is that it has been printed poorly: it’s very hard to see the images because they are on low quality paper unsuitable for detailed images.