Margaret Mayo says in the introduction that each of the seven stories in this book "tries to explain just why some natural object, phenomenon, or living thing looks or behaves the way it does." Each story is creation tale from a different culture around the world. These stories range from four to eleven pages and there are colorful pictures on almost every page. I would recommend this book for students in third through fifth grade, although a teacher could read some of the stories aloud to second graders. I would also use this book or a similar book in a unit about folktales to teach my students that different cultures have different ideas about why the world works the way it does. ( )