Otto the Owl Who Loved Poetry
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
An owl with an unusual passion learns to shine in this fresh, funny debut picture book introducing a poetry-loving owl whom kids will cheer for.
Otto loves poetry—Keats, Rossetti, Dickinson, even T. S. Eliot. He prefers reading to roosting and reciting to hunting. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be a problem. But, you see, Otto is an owl. When the other owls begin to make fun of Otto, he embarks on a difficult journey, finding along the way both his inner poet and a community that accepts him for who he is. Celebrating courage and the importance of sticking with your passion, and incorporating an engaging mix of original and famous poems, Vern Kousky has created an enchanting and inviting world—a forest filled with the sounds of poetry.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kousky's picture-book debut champions poetry and one passionate aspiring poet, in particular, but his sleepy story seems unlikely to hook many readers on the form. While other owls roost in trees and hunt, Otto recites poetry in the moonlight, to the taunts of his peers. Otto finds an appreciative audience in the smiling moon and forest mice, with whom he shares a poem of his own. Curiously, it is Otto's owlish recitation of melancholy verse by Emily Dickinson ("I'm nobody! Whooo are you?/ Are you nobody, too?") that finally wins over his fellow owls. (Otto also shares snippets of poetry by T.S. Eliot, Robert Louis Stevenson, Joyce Kilmer, and Christina Rossetti.) Kousky takes advantage of the story's nocturnal setting, creating shadowy scenes in milky violets and blues, yet the caricatured style used to draw Otto and his fellow animals clashes with these backgrounds, making the animals feel dropped into their surroundings, not part of them. Otto often appears forlorn and mournful, which seems at odds with the message of the power of poetry to lift spirits and inspire. Ages 5 8.
