When Marta ruins her homework and breaks her glasess, grandmother soothes her with an ancient story and one of her delicious tortillas.

Cowley, Joy award winning author of more than three hundred books. She lives in New Zealand. Dyanne Strongbow is the illustrator and has won national award for her watercolor paintings. A girl has a school-day disaster caused by the "fussing" wind. Her Grandmother, who is making "big moon tortillas" in the cookhouse counsels her on different strategies to handle problems by telling her an Native American healing song/story.

This book is about a little girl named Marta and she is doing her homework when all the sudden a gust of wind takes her homework with it through the window. She races outside to find the dogs have chewed it up, while trying to get the papers she also brakes her glasses. Her grandmother cooking the delicious tortillas was the best smell in the world to Marta. She ran to her grandmother crying. Her grandmother calms her by telling her those are little things. She uses the tree, rock, moutain lion, and eagle to show her how to deal with her problems. Her grandmother teachers her not to worry s much and to deal with the problems. Sometimes problems are not as big as we make them. Her grandmother then makes her a tortilla before supper as a treat. ( )

Marta has spent the entire afternoon doing her homework. When she smells the tortillas her grandmother is making, she runs out to the kitchen, but knocks the table with her homework over. Her work goes flying out the window and she runs out to salvage it. While fighting with a puppy to take the work out of its mouth, she breaks her glasses. She just isn't having a good day. Her grandmother tells her that she can decide to make the best of her problem, or cry. That is the underlying theme of the story. We have to learn to deal with our problems; sometimes our problems are small compared to what other people are going through. At the end of the story, she decides to deal with her problems and grandma makes her a special tortilla to cheer her up. I think I would read this book to students simply for entertainment. ( )

This story was about a girl having a bad day because things kept going wrong. She lost her homework and her glasses broke. Her grandmother helped to remind her that sometimes our problems are a lot smaller and easier to fix then we think they are. That is a very important thing to remember. Her grandmother sang Marta Enos a healing song which helped Marta understand that there are many ways to handle a problem, but crying is not a very good one. I thought this was a good story. I liked the healing song that told a story. I thought that was a neat aspect of the story.
One thing that I thought was interesting was the author’s use of similes. For example, when talking about how Marta Enos’ homework flew away the author states, “the homework papers, which slipped and slid like kites without string.” That allows the reader to have a picture of what it may have looked like in their brain. As a visual learner, I loved the descriptive words and phrases that allowed me as a reader to see what was happening in the story. One thing I thought was different was how the author referred to Marta Enos. A few times the author says something along the lines of, “The legs of Marta Enos would not wait another minute” I have never heard of someone’s legs be referred to this way. It was a neat way to show that there are different styles of writing. It continued on to refer to the legs as the subject of a few sentences. I thought this was different because this was the first time I read something like that. The main message in this story is when you have a problem, think about how you want to handle this issue and if it is necessary to become upset about or if it is a small problem that can be fixed. This is an important idea because many people become worked up over a small issue and have a difficult time seeing the big picture of the problem. ( )