What My Child is Reading - August 14, 2010 - Owls

If you've been following along with us at all this week, you're probably not surprised to find our reading centered on owls.

The older children turned mostly to the Internet for fast facts on the nocturnal creatures, but I picked up Ruth Thomson's The Life Cycle of an Owl, for the little ones. It's simply written, and follows the barn owl from roosting, through mating (staying sparse enough in photos, and words on the subject to be comfortable), laying eggs, raising owlets, who in turn, grow up to roost.

The photographs are terrific, but there are a number of shots of unfortunate rodents, about to be consumed, that might be disturbing to the tenderhearted. Owls in crafts, and story books are very cute, but in real life, they are ruthless, and efficient birds of prey.

For the rest of our reading, we stuck with the cute, sweet, owls of the fictional world. Like, in Tim Hopgood's Wow! Said the Owl, where a curious little owl decides to stay up all day, to see what she's been missing. Confronted with a pink sunrise, green leaves, red butterflies, orange flowers, gray clouds, and multi-colored rainbow, all she can say is "Wow!"



Il Sung Na uses an adorable owl to create a sense of symmetry in A Book of Sleep. It's a wonderful book full of creative, mixed media illustrations. We'll be looking for more from this author.



Jane Chapman's illustrations, are less stylized, and verging on realistic, in a Disney sort of way, in Karma Wilson's Bear's New Friend - an upbeat story of Bear meeting a shy new friend. I'll let you guess WHO.



You can find more children's book reviews, and recommendations, at the What My Child Is Reading blog hop, hosted by Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns.



It's great to be a homeschooler.