Owen

Title: Owen (Caldecott Honor Book)

Author: Kevin Henkes

Illustrator: Kevin Henkes

Publisher & Publication Date: Greenwillow Books, 1993

Genre: Traditional Literature, picture book

Grade Level: K-1


Summary: Owen is about a young mouse that carries around his favorite blanket all the time. His parents try to get him to stop carrying it around before he has to start school, but he refuses. They go to their neighbor for advice and she gives them different ideas, but nothing seems to work. Finally, his mother comes up with her "absolutely wonderful, positively perfect, especially terrific idea" of making the blanket into a handkerchief. Owen is satisfied with this solution and then begins to take his handkerchief everywhere like he did the blanket.

Response: I love Owen! I remember reading this book in elementary school. I would make my mom listen to me read it all the time. I had completely forgotten about it until I selected Kevin Henkes as my author/illustrator study. Reading it brought back all the childhood memories of looking forward to reading circle in Kindergarten and of all the countless times I read it on my own or to my family. I never realized how much a simple item meant to a young child when I read it when I was younger, but now that I am grown and I understand things better I understand the idea of the story. I never really had an item that I was so attached to that I wouldn't give it up for anything. I do however have a few blankets that I like to take with me everywhere I go (college, home, vacation). I am not attached to it, I just really like it and it is really warm. I associated this book with the other mouse books that Kevin Henkes wrote, like Chrysanthemum and Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse.

Teaching Ideas: A simple activity that you can use in your classroom would be to have your students bring in their favorite blanket for show-and-tell. Then design a sheet with different shaped "blankets" with the names of different colors in each of the shapes. Have your students color the "blankets" correctly and then have them show you which "blanket" is the same as Owen's and which "blanket" matches the color and shape of like their favorite that they brought in for show-and-tell. This helps students learn how to spell and recognize colors and match shapes of things.