"In the days when all animals and men lived on friendly terms, when Coyote, the prairie wolf, was not a bad sort of fellow when you came to know him, and even the Mountain Lion would growl pleasantly and pass you the time of day—there lived in a beautiful valley a little boy and girl."It's a good basic introduction and goes on in the next paragraph to describe the setting even more clearly. It sets the reader up to understand that this place is a happy, safe place for people and children to live in. The writing also is willing to admit that some aspects of the story have no explanation ("Nobody knows how it happened" in reference to a rock that kept growing upward when the children climbed on it) which is frustrating but also interesting to think about.
I absolutely love the part where all of the animals are trying to jump on the top of the rock to get to the kids, but none of them can jump high enough. A worm comes by and offers to try, and everyone laughs at him. They let him try, though, and he climbs higher than any of them were able to jump. He ends up rescuing the children. I really loved the message of this and how high the stakes were (saving children's lives). The writing made it such an important task by building the tension, which makes the worm even more of a hero.
"But everybody thinks of the Measuring Worm because the Big Rock is still there, and the Indians have named it after him. Tu-tok-a-nu-la, they call it, a big name indeed for a little fellow, yet by no means too big when you come to think of the big, brave thing he did."
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Image info: Little Boy and Girl in the Clouds image from Gutenberg.org
Bibliography: American Indian Fairy Tales unit. Story source: American Indian Fairy Tales by W.T. Larned, with illustrations by John Rae (1921).
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