Knight Owl Review

Knight Owl is a children's fantasy picture book and winner of the Caldecott Honor Award

The targeted age group for this book is preschool to 3rd grade and on the Accelerated Reader it has an AR Reading Level of a 2 meaning it is second grade reading level.

The book follows an owl who wants to be a knight, succeeds and is positioned as a guard. He defends a tower from a dragon and discovers they are very similar and become friends.

Knight Owl was chosen to be examined because it appeared on Bookshop.com as a recommended title under books that have recieved the Caldecott Medal. It is also a more recent release from 2022.

This book in comparrison with the previous read are night and day in their effectiveness. Llama Llama was able to tell its story through the writing more so than the art. Here I would say the art informs the story as much as the writing. The art here is full a vibrant with rich earthtones that either stick to a singular page or are spread out over two pages. Sometimes there is an abstraction in the art where there is no scene on a page, but rather the actions of owl on a white page. It uses techniques such as owls day dreaming to inform us about the story by showing a large thought bubble with a scene taking place in it.

Knight Owl uses onomatopoeia in several instances mainly in the second half of the story to give a sense of danger or fear with terms being used like "whooo" which is used by owl which is a common owl sound. it also is used as a question as well. Then there are several instances of "whoosh" to describe the flapping of the dragons wings. The use of these allows the reader to understand what is happening by the way the term sounds with whoosh giving off a flight like sound or like a gust of wind.

Finally, motif is rather inportant to this story by forming a lesson to be learned by the story's end. For Knight Owl it has several themes present such as fullfilling your dreams by showing even someone small can become anything they want to such as owl becoming a knight. It also shows the importance of finding things in common and making friends with the example being owl making friends with the dragon and learning they have a lot in common and thus saving the day. These are universal lessons to learn that are told in this book, making it worth reading to a child or a child reading it.

References

Denise, C. Knight Owl. Christopher Denise. https://www.christopherdenise.com/copy-of-bunny-in-the-middle-16

Denise, C. (2022). Knight Owl. Christy Ottaviano Books.

Kids Ink Children's Bookstore. (2024). 2023 Newbery and Caldecott Winner and Honor Books!. https://bookshop.org/lists/2023-newbery-and-caldecott-winner-and-honor-books



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