Marinka is 12 and lives in a house with chicken legs. This is how I promote this book to students. It always makes their heads perk up that half inch that every Librarian looks for when they try to get them interested in a book. The house picks itself up at random a few times a year and travels around the world, settling down to let Marinka and her grandmother do their important work. That work is guiding dead spirits from the land of the living to the land of the stars, or the afterlife. Marinka doesn't want to have this gig, she wants to be "normal" with regular friends who aren't ghosts. Then Marinka starts to break the rules, she starts to defy her grandmother and bad things start to happen. The worst being that her grandmother vanishes out of thin air and the house starts to slowly crumble. Desperate, Marinka puts a plan into action that will either save her and the house or plunge everyone she knows into certain peril. There's not much to say about The House With Chicken Legs that hasn't already been said before. It's beautifully written, Marinka is smart, stubborn and determined to live her own life despite the plan that's laid out for her. She makes mistakes and has a good heart, she's a great protagonist. I tell the students she's someone you'd want to be good friends with because you'd know you could trust her. It's a stunning debut that deserves all of the praise that it's getting, makes sure you get it into the hands of anyone in your life ages 10 and up as soon as possible.
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