Arizona Indian children share some of the oldest magic of the Indian world.

Byrd Baylor asked children--Navajo, Hopi, Tohono O'odham, Pima, Apache, Quechan, Cocopah--to choose a story told to them by someone in their own tribe. It should be their favorite story, maybe the best story in the world. That story would be their gift to other tribes, to other children. It would share some of the oldest magic of the Indian world.

At a school in southern Arizona, Byrd Baylor saw a story about Rattlesnake and how he made the first brush shelter so the Papago people would have shade. This story was told by a Tohono O'odham child.

"As soon as I read the story," Byrd said, "I knew I wanted a special kind of book to hold this special kind of story. It would have to be written by children, not tampered with too much by Adults. So I took the Rattlesnake story with me for good luck and camped in my favorite places and went to dances and ceremonials along the way...and talked to children in reservation schools. We talked about storytelling in the Indian way. We talked about how it feels to hear stories that aren't made up new and written down in somebody else's book but are as old as your tribe and are told and sung and chanted by people of your own family, your own clan. We talked about how it feels to hear stories that go back to the oldest memories of your ancestors, to times when animals talked like people, times when people changed into stars or rocks or eagles, times when the world was still new and there were monsters to be killed and heroes to kill them and gods to teach the first people the first things they needed to know.

Most of the stories in And It is Still That Way are just bits and pieces of longer and more complicated legends, but they are the part the children remember.