Grandma Chickenlegs by Geraldine McCaughrean illustrated by Moira Kemp

Following the tradition of Cinderella, following the death of her mother, a stepmother arrives in the home and the father heads away on business. The awful stepmother in this story is making beautiful clothes for her own two daughters and has set Tatia to menial household tasks and of course gives her no food. She then hatches a plan to 'get rid of' young Tatia. She sends her into the woods to ask the witch named Grandma Chickenlegs for a sewing needle. Young Tatia is able to take the little rag doll gifted to her by her late mother. This magic doll will be vital to her survival. 

You might expect, as I did, that Tatia would complete a series of good deeds and that Grandma Chickenlegs would reward her with treasures or a better life but alas this is not the case. Grandma Chickenlegs is evil. She sets Tatia to work weaving at the loom all night. Then we read these really chilling words:

"Heat the water and fill the bath. You know I like my food washed before I eat it." 

Perhaps I should have talked about Hansel and Gretel.

Tatia is by nature a very kind child. When Grandma Chickenlegs gives her white bread rolls, butter and bacon she readily shares these with the cat (bacon), the dog (the rolls), and the squeaky door (the butter). Later she also gifts her ribbon to the magic elm tree in the garden.

Her kindness means she is aided in four perfect ways and so she is able to escape from the witch (Grandma Chicklegs) and even better she meets her absent father at the end of her journey. On his return home he banishes the evil stepmother and her daughters and Tatia along with the cat and dog all live happily ever after.

When you share this book (I hope you can find it in a library) with your class or library group you could use this sentence to talk about word placement:

"Around the garden, on four scratching, paltry legs ran the bleak shack. Its fence was made from whitening bones, the gateposts topped with skulls. The front door swung on its hinges squealing like a thing in pain. Its keyhole gnashed tiny, tinny teeth."

Moira Kemp's illustrations are bright and colorful -- almost comical in the scenes in Grandma Chickenlegs's house, and cheerful when Tatia is at home with her father. Pictures cover most of both pages of the open book, with text integrated into one side. Little details, like the curlers in Grandma's green hair when she's awakened, her teddy bear, and the iron teeth left on the nightstand, will appeal to observant readers. MLIS Understanding

Using twisted perspectives and vigorously applied colors, Kemp creates a set of wild, garishly lit climactic scenes dominated by the grimacing, green-skinned granny—perfect counterpart to McCaughrean’s colorful prose style... Kirkus

I am a fan of Geraldine McCaughrean but looking at her web page I can see there are SO many more of her books that I need to find and read! She has written more than 170. Click here to see some I have talked about here. I especially plan to re-read Pack of Lies. 

Boy oh boy I SO wish I had discovered this book (published in 2020) back when I was in my school library - it is one that I would have loved to share with my library readers in Grade 3 or 4 and then we would have read The Talking Eggs:

The Talking eggs

My friend recommended Grandma Chickenlegs because we were talking about this Middle Grade book I read recently and I commented that I needed to know more about Baba Yaga. It is interesting that both stories involve a magical doll. 

A Wolf for a Spell

Once upon Tomorrow by Karen Comer

 "She was not sure if her tapestries of truth could restore the kingdom."

There are three voices in this YA verse novel. Miri aged 18 lives in 2025; Aleita aged 16 lives one hundred years into the future in 2125; and Sylvie is a girl from the famous fairy tale - Rumpelstiltskin. She is called The Girl at the Threshold. She is tasked with weaving a tapestry for the King.

"Fairytales, I whisper. Fairytales in a hundred years, no matter how messed up the world, whether there's another pandemic or bushfires over half the world or there are no polar bears left, people will still need stories - and fairytales are the truest of stories."

Sylvie's story:

"I am here to weave the King's three tapestries, to show past, present and future of the kingdom .... But you must know this: it is dangerous for a girl to tell the truth."

The king is displeased with the first tapestry - he throws her into a dungeon. She spins the straw and ...

"The straw flowed into fibre, into .... gold. She was spinning gold. The brittle straw became pliable strings of gold through her hands, around the stone, around the stick.. Gold - she had turned her craft of truth into gold."

"You have made me a hero and therefore, I will make you a queen. But should you make me a fool with the third tapestry, I will make you a grave"

Aleita's story:

The imagined future in this book is a dreadful place. Women live in fear of assault and rape; people have a chip in their brain and are regularly jolted with advertising. When Aleita, for example, looks in the mirror it tells her she is using too much shampoo and that orange makeup does not suit her face. Aleta 2125 works at EveNet . They are working to counteract beauty jolts, consumerism calls, home jolts (household and childcare duties) fertility jolts (to increase the declining population).

"Jolts ... they're getting more invasive, you know, particularly for women. A jolt to stop at a bar and have a drink by yourself, just when a football match has finished and there's a crowd of men looking for ... "

"It is illegal to send jolts without an accompanying vibration". 

"I'm seriously considering deactivating my implant as soon as I turn eighteen. I'll go and find a group of non-neurals, live with them on the margins, knit scarves in exchange for food."

The jolt has - "urged me to test for a new virus, suggested I trial an herbal tab for emotional healing. I try to imagine receiving jolts only a couple of times a day. What I could do with clarity of mind, focus, hours and hours between jolts, to create and daydream and think. Gold."

"If my implant is responsible for my most shallow, surface thoughts, then technically I should be able to find some depth - and my own thoughts - without it?"

Once upon Tomorrow is also a Love letter to libraries of all kinds! 

"Libraries are safe havens - legislated to protect humans from neural implant jolting and personal data harvesting. Libraries are one of the last places you can talk freely. You can be yourself in a library."

"More people should spend time in libraries so that the atmosphere of possibilities and problem-solving and perseverance can soak into more people"

Other reviewers are sure to talk about the symbolism of gold and weaving which appears all through the story. For example there is a mention of a gum tree in WA (2025) that has traces of gold in its leaves and of course Sylvie weaves straw into gold. And there are echoes of weaving in the 2025 setting in the wool shop which people visit to seek advice about their knitting.

And there are feminist themes too: "the miller's daughter, although praised for her talent, was still known by her father's occupation."

Here are some of my random details about the invented words used in this book, the setting and more:

• Transport: louzes are a form of high speed on demand possibly robot driven or automated vehicles and a MOT is a photo.
• Other terminology: online is called onliq. I guess we might call this social media. There are also matribots and sisbots - or robots programmed by external organisations. Hali is a robot - a sisbot - who is assigned to work with Aleta.
• Setting: Melbourne - Yarra River and Castlemaine.
• Contemporary issues from 2025 Mushroom murders; and the role of VCE (exams) in the lives of High School students
• Contemporary book authors - Charlotte Wood, Helen Garnder, Marcus Zusak, Sally Rooney, Tara jane winch, Tim Winton, Nagi cookbook
• Human burial in 2125 - is composting - cremation too much carbon, very few coffins are used "instead we allow our loved ones to compost, to nurture the Earth, to grow a tree."
• CJ, a boy from 2125, is sent to work at Honeycomb childcare - we are told they only want perfect babies now. We learn this place used to be a woollen mill and the carers are called matribots. 
• As well as the fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin this story has references to Jung and also the three fates: "Clotho, the spinner who weaves together the thread of life; Lachesis, the allotter who decides how long the thread will be and Atropos, the cutter who snips it."

One of the most dreadful scenes in this book happens near the end (spoiler alert). The authorities who control Hali (the sisbot) instruct Aleta to cut her own flesh

"I grip those scissors, open them up as wide as I can, hold my left arm upright, run both points down the skin on the inside of my arm. Up and down, up and down, up and down. The blood runs from my wrist to my elbow, onto the floor, onto the remains of Mum's scarf. ... Hali is still watching me, eerily quiet."

The audience for this book is Young Adult readers aged 16+. Once upon Tomorrow has 360 pages of fairly small print but more than that I am sure my rambling comments here demonstrate that this is a very complex story. It did capture my attention for several days and even now, a few weeks later, some of the scenes are still on my mind. I think mature readers who have reading stamina are sure to find the ideas in this book intriguing and engrossing. It is due for publication in late April 2026. Thanks to Gleebooks Kids for sharing their advanced reader copy with me. 

Publisher blurb: Miri, an eighteen-year-old hopeful Jungian student, discovers she's pregnant in 2025.

Aleita, sixteen, shelters in the library, the one place free of jolts to her digital implant in 2125.

Interwoven between them stands Sylvie, spinning tapestries to save her life and the kingdom. Sylvie exists in the pages of a mysterious fairytale titled The Girl at the Threshold. Miri, Aleita and Sylvie each need to make a choice in their search for the truth. All three are connected through time by heartbreak, a desperate need to save the environment and a search for family and community. An expansive verse novel about the parallel journeys of three extraordinary girls carving out their own histories - and each other's.

Before reading Once upon Tomorrow it could be helpful to read a few versions of Rumpelstiltskin.  

After reading Once upon Tomorrow, I found a couple of other books for a YA audience based on this fairytale.

I have also read these books by Karen Comer.

Grace Notes

Sunshine on Vinegar Street

The idea that people have chips implanted in their brains was explored in this book from 1984 - it is a story that still haunts me.