An Owl Bedtime Story: The Missing Moon Map

This owl bedtime story follows Orla as a missing moon map leads to an unexpected evening of drawing. Read the complete original story below, followed by a small idea for telling it together.

The Missing Moon Map

Orla the owl kept a moon map on the observatory wall. It showed the round plains, the sharp mountains and a smudge shaped exactly like a cabbage. She had drawn the cabbage herself, after dropping her ink brush.

Tonight she was going to show the map to her nephew Pip. She polished the telescope, set out two cushions and heated a little pot of pear juice. Then she turned toward the wall. The map was gone.

There were four pale corners where it had hung. Beneath them stood a roll of paper tied with string. Orla unrolled it and found a chart of clouds, left by the daytime weather keeper. A note said, "Borrowed your chart for the exhibition. Back tomorrow."

"But the moon is here tonight," said Orla. She looked at the empty wall. Without her labels, she could never remember which plain came beside which mountain. Pip would expect her to know.

Pip arrived carrying his own cushion, which had a hole leaking feathers. "May I look first?" he asked. Orla adjusted the telescope. Pip peered through it for a long time, then lifted his face. "There is a spoon up there."

"A spoon?" Orla looked. A bright curved edge crossed a darker patch. On her map it had an impressive name, but she could not recall it. It did look rather like a spoon.

They spread a clean sheet on the floor. Pip drew the spoon. Orla drew the mountains she could see, although they looked smaller than she remembered. When a cloud drifted across the moon, they waited beside the warm pear juice and shook the loose feathers back into Pip's cushion.

After the cloud passed, Pip found a boot. Orla found a pond with no ducks. Neither could find the cabbage. "That part was mostly ink," Orla admitted. Pip drew a tiny cabbage in the corner anyway.

Their new chart filled slowly. Some places stayed blank because neither owl could decide what they saw. Orla wrote TONIGHT across the top and pinned it to the empty wall.

When Pip left, she kept the telescope pointed toward the moon. Tomorrow her old map would return. There was room beside it for this one, with its spoon, its boot and its pleasantly unfinished white spaces.

Make this telling your own

Let your child invent the name of one crater. Keep that name when Orla draws her replacement chart, so their contribution becomes part of the ending. A child who prefers listening can simply hear the story without choosing anything. If you retell it tomorrow, the ink blot can resemble a different animal, while the empty space and the observatory remain the same.

Day2Tale creates personalized, narrated stories.

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