Wednesday, January 20, 2010

WOW! SAID THE OWL


This is book was one I found and ordered from Cover to Cover and picked up on Monday while visiting with my blogging friends. I'm very excited about this new book. This book is written and illustrated by Tim Hopgood from England and WOW! SAID THE OWL is his first book published in the United States.


On the first page the reader meets a young and curious little owl. I think children will be able to connect with owl because she tries something new and something she isn't suppose to do. Instead of staying up all night, she naps and wakes up just before dawn. She is hoping to see the things she sees at night during the day. As you can guess the owl is seeing things for the first time in color and finds it amazing. "The sky was a warm and wonderful pink", is just one of the phrases using descriptive language to describe a color. "WOW!" said the owl", is a repeating refrain which is perfect for a shared reading experience. I also think the students could make their own color books thinking about colors being represented in every day life and connecting the description to rich language. You might be happy to know that after seeing all of the fantastic colors the owl realizes the night sky is filled with the most beautiful stars. Maybe there's a message there that the things we see daily do hold beauty if we stop and look.

Look for something today that might appear a bit different and see it's beauty. I do hope we see more from Tim Hopgood come our way!

PS - Katie at Creative Literacy has a few more color books you might want to know about.

2 comments:

  1. That's really interesting that they've chosen Wow said the owl to be Hopgood's first US book - I don't think it's his (very) best (but we love him!). I reviewed wow said the owl here:
    http://www.playingbythebook.net/2009/09/14/owls/
    And I've also reviewed 2 other Tim Hopgood books on the blog both of which we loved so much we bought our own copies.
    I love his exuberant use of colour.

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  2. I loved this book too Mandy !!! I too was thinking shared reading. GReat review. I'll have to buy it next trip to CTC!!

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