Early man was overawed by the forces of nature and by the strangeness of natural phenomena. Unable to properly
explain why a certain thing happened, he invented stories to explain it. In time, he had invented a story for
everything—lightning and thunder, forests, the sun, the moon and the Milky Way, birds and beasts. The themes were
simple, and so were the characters—simple men and women, or humanized animals.
The Hare in the Moon—Tales of How and Why is a collection of such stories that, in their own way, explain the
mysterious aspects of nature. They not only entertain but also instruct.
