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Owl at Home [I Can Read!]


Owl at Home is one of Harper & Row’s many titles in the I Can Read! series.  The inside cover explains the series’ system for promoting independent reading in young children, and the title page is followed by a table of contents that enumerates the book’s chapters.  Young children will enjoy the protagonists’ childlike innocence in this episodic narrative of loosely connected adventures in which he demonstrates his faulty understanding of physics by welcoming winter as a house guest, becoming frightened by his own feet, making tear-water tea, striving to be in two places at once, and discouraging the moon from following him home.  Readers will delight in predicting the outcomes of Owl’s mishaps and recognizing the flaws in his logic.  Lobel’s heavily shaded, representational, cartoonish line art provides a depth and richness that complements and extends the text, facilitating the reader’s comprehension of Owl’s logical fallacies.  Furthermore, the use of a muted color palette comprised of black, white, and orange renders a soft, warm firelight glow to Owl’s antics that make his simple, erroneous conclusions oddly endearing.
CHRISTINA E. TAYLOR 
  • Owl at Home [I Can Read!] by Arnold Lobel; illus. by the author 
  • Primary 
  • Harper & Row
  • 64 pp. 
  • Published 1975 
  • ISBN 978-0064440349
  • $3.99 
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