Owl at Home

written by Arnold Lobel

©1975. New York, New York. Harper & Row Publications. Animal Fiction.

370L

Early Chapter Book

This beginning chapter book tells multiple stories about some experiences that owl has at home.

I decided to pick up this book and read it because it sounded familiar and I was curious what the book was like. Plus, I've been looking at a lot of newer children's books, and I wanted to take a look at an older one. 

This book is hard to evaluate with the rubric that I created because it focuses more on people and whether or not the book is diverse, and, well, Owl is an animal of course. With that being said, this book does not fit well into a classroom that wants more multicultural or diverse books.With that being said, I with that being said, I only gave this book about a score of 19/32.The stories are pretty flat, and there really isn't character development. There aren't social messages in the book either, in fact I found some of the stories rather strange. For example, one of the chapters is about how Owl thinks about things that are sad to him, and then cries into a tea kettle, and makes tea with his tears! I simply do not find this book to be culturally relevant or diverse, and probably not a necessary book to have in the classroom. Never the less, I would not say that it is a 'bad' book or not appropriate, I just wouldn't necessarily consider it to be of high quality. I would recommend this book for kindergarten or 1st grade.

Some literary elements in the book include:

Personification: In the first chapter, The Guest, the wind is knocking and pounding on the door, giving is human-like characteristics.

Punctuation: For younger kids, this book would be great for looking at basic punctuation including periods, question marks, and exclamation points.

For a mini lesson on punctuation, have students identify what the sentences ends with based on how it is said (inflection). Next, have students practice saying sentences with exclamation points using inflection, ask questions with inflection, and saying sentences that only just end with a period.