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I’m working on a longer piece, so I wanted to bring you something a little lighter for this week’s newsletter. I’ve been reading Arnold Lobel’s Owl at Home with my 2-year-old recently, and I find myself thinking about it long after he’s asleep.

Owl at Home is less famous than the Frog and Toad books for which Lobel is best known, but it’s always been a favorite in my house. The book tells five very short stories about Owl, a fearful but ultimately loving bird with an unusual outlook on the world.

Until very recently, my 6-year-old demanded a nightly reading of the second story, “Strange Bumps,” in which Owl becomes so terrified of the sight of his own feet under a blanket that he destroys his bed and ends up sleeping in a chair.

My 2-year-old, by contrast, is partial to “Tear-water Tea,” a frankly bizarre tale in which Owl makes himself cry into a tea kettle by thinking of “sad” subjects, like “pencils that are too short to use.”

At the end of the story, Owl boils his own tears and takes a sip. “It tastes a little bit salty,” he says, “but tear-water tea is always very good.” I like to think of this as Owl’s own little meditation practice, in which he considers all the sorrows of his life, allows them to move through his body, and then reabsorbs them........

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