The young heroines of [Mouse Woman and the Vanished Princesses] are not sweet and simple variations on Pretty Redwing, but accomplished, haughty young ladies who guard their dignity even more strenuously than they do their personal safety. And although the narnauks of these stories, like the supernatural beings of other Indian cultures, can change their physical forms, they confine themselves to two guises, one animal, the other human. Consequently, the ground-rules of the fantasy are kept reasonably clear, and the stories seem less arbitrary than most others of the genre….

Beyond her ability to shift her own shape, and on one occasion in this book to lend mouse guise to a human being, Mouse Woman is not a miracle-worker. But she is benevolent and wise, within the confines of her Grundy-like concern for proprieties. Her only moral weakness is a lust for wool to ravel with her 'ravelly...