I purchased Owen and Mzee as soon as I saw it. I loved the book and so have all of the children I've shared it with. A fascinating and heartwarming story.
I was glad to see this new version of the story, A MAMA FOR OWEN by Marion Dane Bauer. This picture book is categorized as fiction. It is a more simple story of the relationship between the baby hippo and the old turtle. The illustrations are done in earth tones, ad the text is more poetic.
The reason I bought this book is to share with my students as a sample of writing--it is not often that I find a fiction story based on a true story that is also available. We do quite a bit of nonfiction writing in 3rd and 4th grades and this will be a nice piece to add to the books we study--it will be interesting to see what the kids notice when comparing the two accounts, when we think about how this author made decisions as a writer, etc.
I am excited to have two versions--one nonfiction, and one based on the true story, to share with kids about an engaging topic.
I love Owen and Mzee! Last year my students started reading the blog posted from the park in Kenya where they live. My kids were reading this blog during self-selected reading. I got this idea from Mark Ahlberg. Over the course of the week we were reading it, the two were being socialized with other animals. It is a fascinating site and story!
ReplyDeleteI didn't know there was an Owen and Mzee blog. Wow. And even though I've read both of these books, I hadn't thought of looking at them in this particular light: as a way to talk about craft writing choices when moving from real events to "stories".
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