I 100% read this book because Pottermore sorted me into the Pukwudgie House at Ilvermorny and I needed to find out more. This book makes them seem like jerks, though the wikipedia page makes them a bit more sympathetic. Anywhoo, good story, nice illustrations by Tomie dePaola. ( )

I liked this book because of the language and the different vocabulary. The author used descriptive language when describing the settings and the scenes. For example, " There once was and there still is narrow Land that darts off from the coast of america as if it were running away from home." I thought the sentences were well thought out. I also liked the vocabulary, it enhanced the story.For example, when the author used the words tinkly and cavorting. " She laughed a tinkly laugh" and "he was leaping through the waves, and cavorting out to the open sea." The main message of this story is if you make a promise to someone you should keep it. ( )

There is an island called Narrow Land that good and bad people live on. The leader Maushop, a giant, is called upon to get rid of the bad people. Instead, he wades over to a different island and is seduced by a singing woman for months. He returns to his home country to find that the bad people have been killing people. He gets mad that they stole the wonderful strawberry bread his wife made. He gets angry when he finds that the little, bad people killed his five sons. That is when he and his wife attack the little people, the Pukwudgies.

This book does a good job expressing the story through illustrations and visual imagery in the text. For example, the illustrations use a simple array of colors which reflects the simplicity of what is going on in the story. The word choice used expresses visual imagery. For example, the five sons transform into "long whalelike islands, their backs humped".

The big message of the story is that if you make a promise to someone, you should keep it right away. More so, no matter what happens, there is always a way through. ( )

I had mixed feelings about this book after I read it. I liked it because the illustrations were beautiful and supported what the text was saying. The pictures showed all the actions of the Pukwudgies and the Giants. However, I didn't like that there really didn't seem to be a moral to the story. The story was an adaptation of a Native American folk tale of how the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard were formed and how Buzzards Bay in Cape Cod was formed, as well as other small islands in the area. But I was expecting something to happen between the giants and the Pukwudgies, but nothing was ever resolved between the two conflicting groups. The message of this story was somewhat hard to find, but I think it has to do with the “new people, ” English settlers, not believing in the same tales of magic that the Wampanoag tribe believed in, symbolizing the change that occurred when the English settled into the Americas and had differing beliefs and ideas from the Native Americans who lived there. ( )