English history as a fairy tale.

The book Puck of Pook's Hill follows two children, Dan and his sister Una, as they spend an enchanted summer in the English countryside. When they perform Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" under the oldest hill in England three times in a row on Midsummer's Eve, who should appear, but the magical faun Puck.

In a series of short episodes, Puck introduces Dan and Una to various characters from England's history, including a Roman legionnaire, a Nobleman, a money-lender, a blacksmith, and one of the old pre-Christian pagan Gods -- Weyland. The story-telling is masterful, the writing lyrical, and the plot moves along quite quickly. The story is interspersed with lots of poems by Kipling, who was, after all, a master poet.