Summary:
This is a book based on a Vietnamese legend. Princess Mat Mat is the ruler of Tiny Kingdom, a small and very poor island kingdom. She and her people are just about to celebrate 100 years of peace ( no one would war with the kingdom since it had no riches to offer), when her advisors tells her there is an admiral with a navy about to attack.
The advisors are very worried but the Princess calls in the astronomer, who tells her about the the relationship between the tides, the sun, and the moon, and concludes that the tides will be very high when the admiral arrives. The Pricess then concocts at plan.
The villagers cut really tall trees up and stick then on the bottom of the sea so that they all have sharped ends pointing straight up. When the tide rises the trees are hidden from view. When the admirals navy chases some small fishing boats close to shore his boats get speared on the trees as the tide lowers.
The admiral, defeated, goes to see Princess Mat Mat. Her advisers say they should punish the Admiral but the Princess refuses to do so and sends the admirals on his way home with his troops.

Review:

This book has a great, if a little unrealistic storyline. The messages in it, the and little man can win and women can be leaders, are great messages for children to hear. The picures were very simplistic, most fo them were black and white and were simply pictoral representations of what was written as opposed to adding to the writting. If the paragraph said men were fishing there was a picure of men fishing etc. I didn't give this book full on 4 or 5 stars because i felt it sort of tried to hard to get its message across really fast in the end with out really introducing it at the beguinning. This book was published by the Feminist Press. It's main message is that girls are smart and can be good leaders too. However trough out most of the book there are no indications towards this message except that the princess is a woman as opposed to a king ruler. Then at the end the author just had the main character sort of state the message in dialog. I didn't see it coming at all because most of the book focuses just on the fact that the Tiny Kingdom was so little and almost nothing and no chance to win, so the reader starts to think of it as a David vs Goliath story. The feminist twist is not enphasized at all in most of the book. I think the author could have been more clever about inserting this main theme into the book rather than just throw it in at the end. ( )