What a good, round friend you are! – Owl

With a bright moon following me home during my daybreak walk, especially welcome this week, I am reminded of the story of “Owl and the Moon”: “Moon, you have followed me all the way home. What a good, round friend you are!”

The story is from Arnold Lobel’s Owl at Home, a favorite “I CAN READ Book” from 1975.  Later that decades, son Dan and I enjoyed the five delightful stories in it: “The Guest,” who turned out kinda pushy, “Strange Bumps,” which were more benign that naive Owl thought, “Tear-Water Tea,” which I enjoyed reading tearily, “Upstairs and Downstairs,” with poor Owl finding out he couldn’t be both places at once, and the dear “Owl and Moon.”

Arnold Lobel was such a favorite author while Dan was small. He wrote the Frog and Toad series, Mouse Tales and Mouse Soup, and more.

We wrote fan letters to the author. His reply was such a delight, including a sketch of Owl himself. “Dear Mrs. Kidney and Dan, Thanks so much for your nice letters. I am delighted to hear that I have such ardent fans in Iowa. My newest book will be Fables and it will be published in the fall of this year. Here is a sketch of Owl for you. Your friend, Arnold Lobel”

Fables won the 1981 Caldecott Medal for the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children published in the U.S. during the preceding year, so the letter must have been written in 1980.

Our treasured copies of the “Lobel books,” along with others, are about to go home with granddaughter Kate. I hope she enjoys them as much as we did. I hope that when the moon follows her home, the words “What a good, round friend you are!” will also follow her home.