In this tour de force, master storyteller Gregory Maguire offers a dazzling novel for fantasy lovers of all ages.
Elena Rudina lives in the impoverished Russian countryside. Her father has been dead for years. One of her brothers has been conscripted into the Tsar’s army, the other taken as a servant in the house of the local landowner. Her mother is dying, slowly, in their tiny cabin. And there is no food. But then a train arrives in the village, a train carrying untold wealth, a cornucopia of food, and a noble family destined to visit the Tsar in Saint Petersburg — a family that includes Ekaterina, a girl of Elena’s age. When the two girls’ lives collide, an adventure is set in motion, an escapade that includes mistaken identity, a monk locked in a tower, a prince traveling incognito, and — in a starring role only Gregory Maguire could have conjured — Baba Yaga, witch of Russian folklore, in her ambulatory house perched on chicken legs.
Gregory Maguire is the author of the incredibly popular books in the Wicked Years series, including Wicked:The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, which inspired the musical. He is also the author of several books for children, including What-the-Dickens, a New York Times bestseller. Gregory Maguire lives outside Boston.
New York native Gregory Maguire rose to fame with his best-selling novel Wicked, which has sold millions of copies around the globe and remains a sensation as a Broadway musical. Now he is the author of an impressive collection of children’s books, adult novels, and numerous short stories, including Egg and Spoon and What-The-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy, middle-grade novels sure to engage children of every age and background.
Gregory Maguire worked for eight years as a professor and associate director at the Simmons College Center for the Study of Children’s Literature before receiving his PhD in English and American literature from Tufts University. “Nothing serves a writer better than getting to teach children’s books as literature—as an art form that relies on traditions of narrative shapeliness and verbal pizzazz as well as saucy innovation,” the author says. He also cofounded and currently codirects Children’s Literature New England, a nonprofit educational charity that promotes awareness of the significance of literature in the lives of children. With those aims in mind, Gregory Maguire has served on the juries for the Caldecott Medal, the National Book Award for Children’s Books, and the New York Times Best Illustrated Books of the Year.
And what advice would he pass along to aspiring young writers? When he himself was growing up, Gregory Maguire mimicked Harriet the Spy’s investigative route. “Get a spy notebook and spy on everyone,” he suggests. “Try not to get in trouble. Try not to break the law. But pay attention and write it down. That’s the best training a would-be writer can have.”
Gregory Maguire lives with his family outside of Boston, Massachusetts.
In an interview last year, Gregory Maguire laid out his motivation as an author: “One of my gambits as a novelist is to try simultaneously to make my readers feel off-balance and at home.” Maguire most famously accomplished this feat in his Wicked Years series, which planted its audience in a familiar place—the Land of Oz—but made that place […]
Wicked scribe Gregory Maguire takes his patented vim, vigor and wit and applies it to Russian folklore in his latest, Egg & Spoon. At times rollicking, the story follows two young girls, Cat and Elena, in a classic tale of princess-and-pauper mistaken identity. But Maguire has made flipping classics on their head his bread and butter, so […]
Sometimes we forget that all those books about witches, vampires, werewolves, and fairies are basically based on tales people used to pass around the campfire. But vamps and wolfmen aren’t the only supernaturals in town, and 2014 has seen the release of some excellent YA novels that are breathing new life into myths and legends less well-trodden than […]
One of the best things about traveling through literature is the ability to visit countries all around the world; exploring their histories, their landscapes, and their people, all without leaving your own living room. Below are five books that explore Russia and the former Soviet Union.
