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Copywork
About This Passage
Selected because Owl ends his sad work with the simplest of words: "That does it." The crying was a job, and the job is finished. Lobel teaches dialogue punctuation here, and the copywork shows how a character can be both sad and happy in the very same paragraph. Notice the funny detail at the end — the tea is salty because it is made of tears, and Owl drinks it on purpose anyway.
"There," said Owl. "That does it." Owl stopped crying. He put the kettle on the stove to boil. Owl felt happy as he filled his cup. "It tastes a little bit salty," he said, "but tear-water tea is alwa...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Tell someone what happened in this story in order. When you get to the most important part, slow down and tell it carefully — what happened, why it mattered, and what you think about it.
Discussion Questions
- Owl decides to make tear-water tea, and to make tear-water tea he needs tears. So Owl sits down on purpose and thinks about sad things until he is crying. Why would anyone make themselves cry on purpose? What in the story makes you think so?
- The sad things Owl thinks about are very small: chairs with broken legs, spoons that fell behind the stove, songs that cannot be sung anymore, pencils that are too short to use. None of these things are big sad things like losing a friend. Why does Owl pick small sad things instead of big ones? What in the story makes you think so?
+ 2 more questions in the complete study guide
Critical Thinking
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