Book of the Month: The Girl Who Speaks Bear

This book by Sophie Anderson was in a stack we were sorting through in our front room. Cathy isn't sure where she picked it up originally. The illustrations (by Kathrin Honesta) caught my eye and when I opened it, I saw it was a book with a map in the front. I'm a sucker for books with maps in the front. So I thought I would give it a go and added it to my 'to read' pile. 

Cathy has told me she wants to read the book too, so I am going to try and keep this as spoiler-free as possible. It's set in a Russian-esque setting -  snow and woods and various anglicised Russian words dropped into the text. There is a glossary of those words in the back, presumably to help younger readers as this is a 'young adult' book.

The story itself is interspersed with short fairy tales, but overall is a fairly standard quest in search of answers and gathering friends to help you along the way. The central character is a girl called Yanka, who is tall and strong and feels like she doesn't really belong in the village where she is growing up. And that's mainly because she doesn't really belong. She's a foundling and, as she becomes aware of that and starts to wonder about where she really comes from, she finds out that a lot of folk tales she has been told have personal significance for her. 

Other books on the back cover

Sophie Anderson has written some other books drawing on a similar Russian folk tale backdrop, and it felt like some of the other characters, like the yaga witches in their living house, appeared without much of an introduction because they have featured in other books. That was a bit odd.

I thought there was a lot to like about this book. Some of the descriptions and metaphors are beautifully done. The setting tends to work. However, overall I struggled to get into the book. Yanka's internal monologue gets a bit tiring at times as she picks over the different stories she hears and tries to fathom the truth in them. I'm glad I persevered as the pace picked up towards the end and I ended up wanting to know how the story ended.