Among the Hupas, a boy becomes a man upon learning to paddle a canoe, catch salmon and hold his tongue--and the story of how Muskut makes the grade (after leaving a canoe in the sun to crack) is just distinctive enough in its particulars to dispel the certainty that you've been there before. Not always, however, with such propriety: Miskut's father's reserve is matched by the author's. . . in the laconic line drawings on moss green as well. Unimportant but not negligible.