Dreamcatcher
Dreamcatcher
by Audrey Osofsky, illustrated by Ed Young
Dreamcatcher is an historically accurate story of an Ojibway family long ago, focusing on the baby. As the baby sleeps, grandmother sews, mother gathers cattails, and sister finishes weaving the web on the dreamcatcher. The Ojibway dreamcatchers were intended to snag any bad dreams into the net portion, allowing good dreams to sail through for the baby. Bad dreams stayed stuck in the dreamcatcher all night, and dissolved in the morning sunlight. This is such a lovely custom.
I have never met any child who doesn’t love the story of dreamcatchers. Children also like to make dreamcatchers as a craft project to actually take home and use. Many first graders assured me that their dreamcatchers really worked!
However, a word of caution, we must remind children that although this story shows Ojibway people dressed for historical accuracy they don’t dress like that today. They also live in houses just like everyone else, now. In fact, people the children may know or see in places like stores and movie theaters could be Ojibway, so they should always be respectful like they hopefully are for everyone all the time.
My FREE PDF work page is for children to fill in the blanks with compound words for the story on the page. Dreamcatcher work page PDF, free
Happy reading,
