frog and toad

"Probably the most unique story in Owl at Home is 'Tear-Water Tea,' in which Owl makes a special tea brewed from his tears. To produce the tears, he thinks of sad things like 'songs that cannot be sung because the words have been forgotten' and 'pencils that are too short to use'...Owl’s tears come from those broken and disjointed parts of existence that make no sense, so all that is to be done with them is to accept them, and drink them with a pot of tea."

Bert Clere on another of Lobel's masterpieces, Owl at Home: The Atlantic. Illustration by Arnold Lobel.

via {sho&tell}