Owl at Home

Summary

Owl at Home is a beginning reader of five short stories about Owl, a round, kindly, rather muddled bird who lives alone in a snug house with a fireplace, a kettle and a staircase. In The Guest, someone knocks loudly on a winter night. Owl decides it must be poor old Winter, cold outside, and kindly opens the door. Winter rushes in, blows out the fire, whirls snow up the stairs, frosts the rooms and freezes Owl's pea soup in the bowl, and Owl has to order the rude guest out before he can warm the house again. In Strange Bumps, Owl notices two bumps under his blanket at the foot of the bed. They move when he moves, and he cannot guess what they are, so he spends a fretful night watching them and finally goes downstairs to sleep in his chair. The reader sees what Owl never does: the bumps are his own feet. In Tear-Water Tea, Owl sets his kettle on his lap and thinks of sad things, such as chairs with broken legs, songs that cannot be sung because the words are forgotten, spoons lost behind the stove, books with pages torn out, stopped clocks, and mornings nobody saw because everyone was asleep. When the kettle is full of tears he boils them and enjoys a cup of slightly salty tea. In Upstairs and Downstairs, Owl worries that while he is in one part of his house he is missing the other, and runs up and down the stairs faster and faster, trying to be in both places at once, until he is worn out. In Owl and the Moon, Owl watches the moon rise over the sea, and as he walks home it seems to follow him. He tells it kindly that it cannot come into his little house, but when he climbs into bed the moon is shining in his window, and he is comforted. Lobel wrote and illustrated the book, which Harper & Row published in its I Can Read series in 1975.

Top Lessons

• Kindness needs good sense

  Owl opens his door to Winter because he feels sorry for it, and Winter ruins his evening. The story honours Owl's kind heart while showing that kindness must also look at who is knocking and what it will do.

• Look closely before you worry

  In Strange Bumps Owl loses a whole night's sleep over his own feet. The joke lets a child see, from the outside, how fears can grow when we do not stop to look carefully.

• You cannot be everywhere at once

  Owl runs himself ragged on the stairs because he cannot bear to miss either floor of his house. The story gently teaches that every creature is in one place at a time and does best to enjoy where it is.

• Sadness and comfort

  Tear-Water Tea lets Owl be sad on purpose about small lost things, and he feels better afterwards; Owl and the Moon ends a lonely walk with a friendly light at the window. Lobel shows that sadness is part of life and that comfort often comes quietly.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

No medical content of note. Tear-Water Tea, in which Owl deliberately thinks of sad things until he weeps and then feels refreshed, and Strange Bumps, in which worry keeps him awake, are gentle pictures of ordinary sadness and childish night fears rather than of illness.