Mouse Woman and the Mischief-Makers

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

To see Mouse Woman scrabbling busily with the tag ends of wool she finds utterly irresistible, few would guess that she is in truth a narnauk or super-natural being, one of the most powerful of the West Coast spirit people.

Mouse Woman is a proper little person, and she disapproves of mischief makers; so she uses her great powers to settle disputes and to keep the peace. But just once in a while, she gets into a little mischief of her own.... This tiny, charming grandmother-figure is the much-loved heroine of several of Christie Harris’s popular fairy tales of the people of Canada’s Northwest Coast.