Stories in the Night - Losing your tail

Last night we did a story from "Keepers of the Night: Native Stories and Nocturnal Activities for Children." I have had this book for some time and was excited to use it.  Overall, while I enjoyed the story we read and some of the questions about the story, overall the emphasis on the facts about how eyes work and the different kinds of night animals was too much for me.  I was not sure how you would use this content without making it a memorization of facts activity.   The few things I tried to share with them - how much a bat could eat- which seemed cool and was unknown to me, they already knew and acted bored. 

The story itself was good.  It was the story of the sun who went missing and the squirrel who went to look for it and in helping the sun got burned, went blind and lost his tail.  So the sun offered him a gift and the squirrel choose flight, and was made into the first bat.  There was so much about living the circle in the story - lessons about letting things go and becoming something new.  One of the questions we discussed was what you would ask for in that circumstance.  Sophie answered in a "good" grown up way and wanted world peace.  But Runa put herself in the place of the squirrel and asked for never ending acorns and a warm nest.  I love to watch her think.

The girls were able to relate this story to the rainbow crow and raven steals the sun stories and it was great to see them making those connections.  I thought this book would be more, but in thinking about my disappointment I realized that I actually took a lot away from this story, so I guess it actually did it's job.  Have you used any of the books from this series?  What was your experience?