The House with Chicken Legs Runs Away – at a glance
The School Reading Lists’ five word review: Exciting, loss, found family, bravery.
Children’s book title: The House with Chicken Legs Runs Away.
Children’s author: Sophie Anderson.
Children’s illustrator: Elisa Paganelli.
Cover illustration: Melissa Castrillon.
Genre: Children’s fiction.
Published by: Usborne.
ISBN: 9781803704364.
Recommended for children aged: 9-12.
First published: Paperback April 2026.
This children’s book is ideal for: reading as a class or using as an example of how a fantasy world can be used to explain and understand human emotions.
Trigger warning: This book helps to explore the feelings experienced when someone you love dies. The house and the Gate of Stars help the recently departed to pass over, but as the story progresses, it is the house itself that Marinka loses.
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Our review:
Marinka’s house is alive, it also moves from place to place on its huge chicken legs, and helps those who have died to pass through the Gate to the Stars. Having lived in it all her life, Marinka loves the house dearly, and they understand each other’s feelings and worries. When the Gate suddenly expands and explodes, the house begins to run. Shocked by what has happened, Marinka, her jackdaw, Jack, and best friend Benjamin, run too, determined to find out what is wrong and how they can help.
Their journey takes them across land and sea until, on the island of the Gate Carver, they are able to learn the skills needed to close the gate, but their problems are not over. Without the Gate and the Guiding service provided for the dead, in any location they stop in, the house begins to falter and grow frail. Marinka can’t imagine life without her wonderful, empathetic house but, as she knows only too well, nothing lasts forever. Now she has to say goodbye to her travelling life and instead remain in one place without her wonderful friend around to protect her.
Our verdict:
This is a beautifully written book about loss, adventure, friendship, and facing your fears, as well as embracing a future you did not want and making it your own.
Marinka is a great main protagonist, instantly likeable, and her friendship with Benjamin is a positive, mutually advantageous relationship built on trust. After the death of her grandmother, Baba, in the previous book, orphan Marinka shares her home with Yaga Tatyana. Together, they send the recently departed through the Gate of Stars and on to their final resting place in a ceremony called the Guiding. The House replenishes its energy during these celebrations. When the gate malfunctions, Marinka and Benjamin are plunged into an exciting adventure and finally manage to close it before realising the house cannot survive without its power. After returning to the enchanted tree which gave it life centuries earlier, the house is absorbed back into its trunk, leaving Marinka both bereft and homeless. She has, however, found a relative, her great uncle, who lives by the tree, and with Yaga Tatyana by her side, she decides to make her new home there.
Marinka notices that the enchanted tree is growing new houses, and after a few months, three burst into life, each with a characteristic she recognises from her beloved house, and gradually, bravely, she begins to look forward rather than back, knowing eventually things will get better.
Although this is the second book about the house with chicken legs, it can be read as a standalone.
Teaching points and book club discussion ideas:
- Marinka lives in a house that can communicate with her, keep her safe, while changing location on its chicken legs when it needs to. What other creatures do you think the author could have used to provide the house with movement? Marinka and Benjamin travelled in a large wooden mortar and pestle. Do you think this would be really cool or really scary?
- This book is based on a Russian traditional story about the circle of life. We can use The House to represent anything we lose that we love and need. Did the fact that the author used the house for this help you to understand Marinka’s feelings of loss?
- Benjamin and Marinka have a very strong friendship. How difficult would the journey have been for Marinka without him?
- Sometimes being brave means facing your fears, at others it can mean doing nothing and letting a situation run its course, or accepting you can’t change the past in any way. Marinka dealt with all three of these. Which one do you think was hardest and why?
- Benjamin was very interested in the Gate Carver’s message and tools. Do you think he might travel back to the island one day and take on his responsibilities?
- If your house could just stand up and take you anywhere, which location would you choose?
- This is the second book about the House with Chicken Legs. Described as a standalone, do you think you need to read the two books in order?
- If you’ve not read the first one, will you now read the previous novel?
- Read a free extract.
Many thanks to Usborne for the review copy.
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