Kids zone

Tell me a story

GIRL AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD (a Yurok Indian legend)

adapted by Amy Friedman and illustrated by Jillian Gilliland

Umai, a restless and dreamy young woman, lived with her people, the Woge, on the far edge of their world, a flat plate that floated upon the Ocean Within the World. The Woge were the first people -- those who formed the geography of the Earth, the World Within the World.

Above this world rose a great bowl of blue -- this was the sky. Beyond the lip of that bowl was another ocean known as the Ocean Beyond the Ocean.

The waves of the Ocean Beyond the Ocean lapped at the shores of a world called the World Beyond the World. Those waves hurtled across the oceans, bobbing the bowl of the sky up and down, up and down. As that sky bobbed, a gap was created.

Every once in a great while, the two worlds caught sight of each other through that gap between ocean and sky. This appeared at sunset as a bright flash of light with a green tinge to it. And each evening at...