Egg and Spoon: A Russian Folktale Feast

I have to admit that I am guilty of judging books by their covers. Sometimes. My initial reaction to Egg and Spoon by Gregory Maguire happened to be one of those times. The cover looked awesome, so I took the book home and devoured it like a too-large chocolate babka.

Maguire is best known for his popular novel Wicked, which was later made into a hit play that has toured the country. I imagine his status as a successful writer limited his editors' attempts at trimming this big boy down, bringing to mind the example of J.K. Rowling's bloated fifth Harry Potter book. Like the Harry Potter book, however, it is enjoyable despite its too-muchness.

Egg and Spoon tells the story of an an imprisoned monk who tells the tale of two girls from radically different circumstances in 1905 czarist Russia. Starving peasant Elena Rudina is struggling to care for her dying widowed mother when a train carrying Ekaterina, a wealthy aristocrat traveling to Saint Petersberg, is forced to stop near Elena's village for repairs. As luck would have it, Ekaterina jumps off the train to rescue the Faberge egg she has been showing to Elena (who is aboard) just as the train is fixed and pulls away. The stage is set! What follows is a mishmash of fairytale, magic, humor, and ethical quandary that is essentially the book version of an amply proportioned matryoshka, a Russian nesting doll. While not for everybody, Egg and Spoon has a lot going for it. So give it a try. Or not. As the witch Baba Yaga (a major character full of vim and anachronistic witticisms) says, "There's the road, there's your life. I'm done with sharing."

Interested in other new titles from our library system?  Just click on the New Items link on the library's main page to browse and place holds on the new goodies. Приятного чтения (Happy reading!)

History of the Future

Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future is the newest release from award-winning young adult writer A.S. King. King is known for her strong and unique voice, which carries throughout in this novel about Glory, a bright but confused teen graduating from high school with nothing ahead of her but a question mark. All her peers are going off to college and starting their lives, but she’s stuck in place, still struggling with her mother’s suicide, her father’s grief, and her own inability to feel like she belongs in the world.

Enter the bat.

When Glory and her maybe-friend Ellie find a petrified bat clinging to the eaves of Ellie’s porch, it becomes a sudden strange catalyst for change. The wall surrounding Glory disappears, and she suddenly senses the future and the past of all the people around her. The circumstances surrounding her mother’s mysterious suicide à la Sylvia Plath start to come to light, but that's only half of what Glory needs. The other half is feeling like a necessary part of the future. A vivid premonition of the world gone badly astray helps take care of that.

While the overall book is a realistic coming-of-age story, the dip into magical realism is weirdly fascinating and metaphorical, a necessary dose of a broader perspective that shocks Glory out of her numbness and self-pity-- and makes the book an adventure to read.  Glory O'Brien's History of the Future is another YA offering where the quality of writing, plot structure, and sheer fun, tops many books written for an adult audience.