The Okay Witch

by Emma Steinkellner

Thirteen-year-old Moth Hush feels out of place in Founder's Bluff, Massachusetts, until an unexpected burst of magic reveals that she belongs to a family of witches. With help from a talking cat, Mr. Laszlo, Moth uncovers her town’s troubling history and her family’s secrets while navigating friendship, her mother’s expectations, and the question of who she wants to become.

Big Idea

Discovering who you are involves questioning inherited stories, recognizing your strengths, and deciding how to use them. Emma Steinkellner’s graphic novel shows how words, images, and pacing can make that journey both funny and emotionally powerful.

Discussion Questions

1.How does Moth’s understanding of herself change after she discovers her magic? Which experiences help her grow, and which make her feel more uncertain?
2.Why might Moth’s mother, Calendula, want to keep their family’s magical history hidden? How do her choices both protect Moth and limit her?
3.How does learning about Founder's Bluff’s treatment of witches change Moth’s understanding of her town? Whose perspectives are missing from the stories a community tells about itself?
4.How do Mr. Laszlo’s humor and companionship affect Moth’s journey? What can he offer her that the other characters cannot?
5.Choose a sequence in which the pictures communicate something the dialogue does not. How do expressions, panel sizes, or silent moments shape your understanding of Moth’s feelings?

Classroom Activities

A Little Magic, Two Different Speeds

Students create two short comic versions of the same invented, book-inspired moment: Moth’s magic unexpectedly appears during an ordinary school day. One version moves quickly toward the magical surprise; the other slows down to reveal her worry, anticipation, and reaction. Students compare how panel choices, dialogue, and pauses change the reader’s experience. Recommended for grades 5–7, with support or extension as needed.

Lesson Plan

⏱ 45 minutes📦 Copies of The Okay Witch or access to teacher-selected pages, paper, pencils, erasers, optional colored pencils or crayons, and three-panel and six-panel comic templates.

Learning Goals

Explain how panels, dialogue, and visual details influence pacing in a graphic novel.
Use evidence from The Okay Witch to connect Moth’s reactions to themes of identity and belonging.
Create contrasting comic sequences that deliberately accelerate or slow the same event.
Revise a sequence after receiving feedback about clarity, pacing, and emotional effect.

Activity Steps

1.Launch and connect, 5 minutes: Briefly discuss Moth’s discovery of her powers. Invite students to name an ordinary situation in which unexpected magic would complicate her wish to fit in.
2.Read like creators, 8 minutes: Examine a teacher-selected magical-action sequence and a quieter family conversation. Identify panel count, dialogue density, expressions, and pauses; discuss how these affect reading speed.
3.Plan one event, 5 minutes: Students outline an invented moment with a clear setup, magical disruption, and reaction. Ask them to keep Moth’s desire for belonging central rather than treating magic only as spectacle.
4.Make two versions, 15 minutes: Students draw a fast version in three panels and a slower version in six panels. Both must depict the same event, but the slower version should add anticipation, a meaningful detail, or a silent reaction.
5.Test and revise, 8 minutes: Partners read both versions and explain where they slowed down or felt surprised. Creators revise one panel, line of dialogue, or transition using that feedback.
6.Reflect, 4 minutes: Students write a brief explanation identifying two pacing choices and how those choices reveal Moth’s feelings.

Standards Connections

ELA: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.1 — Cite textual evidence to support analysis; include relevant dialogue and visual details from the graphic novel.
ELA: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.3 — Describe how the plot unfolds and how Moth responds or changes as the story develops.
ELA: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.3 — Develop a narrative using effective techniques, relevant details, and a coherent sequence of events.
ELA: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.6.1 — Participate in collaborative discussions, building on others’ ideas and expressing interpretations clearly.
SEL and visual literacy: Explore self-awareness and perspective-taking while interpreting how images and words communicate emotion. Grade 6 ELA standards are an illustrative alignment for the suggested grades 5–7 audience.

Pace-Write-Read Study with Pace-Write It!

In The Okay Witch, Emma Steinkellner makes pacing visible. Moth Hush’s ordinary school experiences, unexpected magical discoveries, and encounters with her family’s past unfold through combinations of dialogue, expressions, panel transitions, and page layouts. Readers can move quickly through a magical disruption, then linger over a face that reveals embarrassment or uncertainty. Studying those shifts helps students recognize that pacing is not simply how much happens: it is how a storyteller directs attention. The book also offers a useful model for balancing an outward adventure with an inward journey. Moth wants to understand her powers, but she also wants to belong and to understand why Calendula has concealed their family history. Humor—especially through Mr. Laszlo—can release tension, while family disagreements and revelations give readers reasons to pause. Have students investigate particular sequences rather than assume that more panels always mean slower reading or more dialogue always means stronger characterization. In a Pace-Write-Read workshop, students first notice a craft choice, then try it in their own short comic, and finally read the result with a partner. The goal is intentional storytelling, not polished drawing: a stick figure’s expression, a carefully placed speech balloon, or an extra silent panel can change how a reader experiences Moth’s uncertainty and courage.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
1. Pacing	Compare a sequence involving Moth’s unpredictable magic with a quieter exchange between Moth and Calendula. Ask students how panel transitions, dialogue, and reactions change the speed they feel while reading.
2. Plot	Trace how discovering her powers leads Moth toward questions about her family and Founder's Bluff. Identify moments when a discovery changes what she wants or what she decides to do next.
3. Prosody	Read a short exchange involving Moth and Mr. Laszlo aloud, using balloon punctuation and facial expressions to guide phrasing and emphasis. Compare two performances to show how vocal choices can alter the same scene’s pace.
4. Word	Examine the compact wording of selected speech balloons and identify a word that conveys attitude or emotion. Try substituting a longer explanation and discuss what happens to the comic’s speed and voice.
5. Concept	Explore the central concept of an awkward young teenager discovering that she is a witch. Ask how the magical premise makes familiar questions about fitting in, family rules, and self-acceptance newly visible.
6. Voice & Worldview	Contrast Moth’s curiosity about magic with Calendula’s caution. Discuss how their different experiences shape what each character believes is exciting, dangerous, or worth protecting.
7. Point of View	Notice how the narrative centers Moth’s discoveries while pictures can also show other characters’ reactions. Redraw a brief exchange from Calendula’s position and consider which feelings or information become more prominent.
8. Setting & Place	Investigate how Founder's Bluff functions as both Moth’s everyday home and a place with a history of hostility toward witches. Connect present-day locations and historical sequences to the question of who feels welcome there.
9. Original Characters	Study how Moth’s appearance, interests, awkwardness, and reactions make her more specific than a generic young witch. Have students give a supporting character a distinctive desire and visual trait rather than only a magical ability.
10. Dialogue	Compare Moth’s conversations with Calendula and Mr. Laszlo to see how dialogue expresses different relationships. Identify a line that advances the conflict while also revealing the speaker’s personality.
11. Details	Look for a small gesture, background feature, or facial change that adds information beyond a speech balloon. Ask whether removing it would weaken the humor, setting, or emotional clarity.
12. Descriptions	Discuss how Steinkellner’s drawings perform descriptive work that prose might express in sentences. Students translate one panel into prose, then decide which descriptive information their own comic can show without words.
13. Firsts	Study Moth’s early discovery that she can perform magic as a first experience that changes her sense of possibility. Identify how the sequence gives readers space to register both the event and her response.
14. Immediacy & Engagement	Find a moment when Moth’s embarrassment, curiosity, or magical trouble pulls readers directly into the action. Ask what the reader understands immediately and what remains uncertain enough to encourage continued reading.
15. Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Contrast moments presented through sustained dialogue and action with passages that convey background more compactly. Discuss why Moth’s family history sometimes requires a different storytelling structure from her immediate experiences.
16. Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Separate tension about Moth’s relationships from suspense about her powers and family secrets. Locate a revelation and explain what earlier information made it surprising without making it confusing.
17. Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Examine historical or family-history sequences as shifts away from Moth’s present, noting the cues that orient readers. Identify an unresolved moment that invites continued reading; treat flash-forward as a comparison technique to try, not a device students must find in the book.
18. Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Inspect what readers know just before and just after a selected page turn or chapter boundary. Ask how withholding a reaction, answer, or new image can create anticipation.
19. Pace & Creativity	Use one of Moth’s magical mishaps as inspiration for several possible panel arrangements. Emphasize that creative pacing comes from choosing where readers should rush, anticipate, or linger—not simply adding more action.
20. Play	Notice how the combination of school-life awkwardness and supernatural events invites playful storytelling. Students invent a harmless magical complication that also reveals something about Moth’s wish to fit in.
21. Performance	Perform a short conversation between Moth and Calendula, pausing where the panels suggest hesitation or reaction. Compare the spoken performance with silent reading to explore how the artwork supplies timing.
22. Personality	Track how Moth’s expressions and decisions communicate her personality before she explains herself. Ask students to portray curiosity or insecurity in a silent panel rather than naming the trait.
23. Humor	Examine Mr. Laszlo’s role in the book’s humor, including the contrast between his feline appearance and conversational presence. Identify how the order of setup and reaction helps a funny moment land.
24. Pause	Find a quiet reaction panel following a revelation or difficult exchange. Discuss how a pause allows readers to consider Moth’s feelings instead of immediately moving to the next plot event.
25. Poetry / Poetic Devices	Explore the metaphorical connection between discovering magic and discovering an unfamiliar part of oneself. Students can write a brief metaphor inspired by Moth’s experience without assuming the novel is written in verse.
26. Repetition	Track a recurring concern, such as Moth’s desire to belong or Calendula’s warnings about magic. Discuss how repetition gains meaning when later experiences change the reader’s understanding of it.
27. Rhythm	Read a selected page as a pattern of speech, action, and reaction beats. Compare that pattern with a family-history passage to consider how different rhythms support comedy, explanation, or emotional weight.
28. Punctuation	Examine how questions, exclamations, and other punctuation shape the delivery of selected speech balloons. Rewrite one balloon with different punctuation and test whether Moth sounds curious, alarmed, or irritated.
29. Questions	List the questions Moth’s discovery raises about herself, Calendula, and Founder's Bluff. Track when answers arrive and how each answer may produce a new question that keeps the plot moving.
30. Compare-Contrast	Compare Moth’s enthusiasm about her heritage with Calendula’s reluctance to embrace it openly. Use specific scenes to explain how similar family connections can lead to different choices.
31. Objects	Choose an object visible in a school, home, or magical scene and investigate its function: setting detail, action tool, or clue. In a student comic, let an ordinary school object become the focus of an unexpected magical event.
32. Threes	Use setup, magical disruption, and reaction as a three-beat way to analyze or adapt a moment involving Moth. Present this as a useful composing tool rather than a claim that the novel consistently follows a rule of three.
33. Lists	Have students make separate lists of what Moth knows about her family before and after key discoveries. Compare how a list compresses information with how Steinkellner dramatizes emotionally important discoveries in scenes.
34. White Space & Negative Space	Examine gutters and areas of relatively empty space around characters on selected pages. Discuss how spacing separates moments, clarifies reading order, or directs attention toward an isolated reaction.
35. Art & Graphics	Analyze how color, expressions, body language, and panel composition distinguish everyday life from magical or historical material. Require students to point to actual visual choices rather than describe the artwork only as lively or appealing.
36. Interactives & Gamification	Turn close reading into a classroom pacing hunt: partners locate a pause, a surprise, a rapid transition, and an expressive silent moment. This is an instructional game built around the book, not a claim that the novel contains interactive features.
37. Placement	Trace the placement of speech balloons, figures, and key revelations on a selected page. Ask how the reading path controls when readers encounter information and whether a reaction appears before or after its cause.
38. Form	Discuss why the graphic-novel form suits a story combining magical spectacle with Moth’s private uncertainty. Convert a short sequence into prose and compare what each form makes immediate or leaves for readers to imagine.
39. Dummy	Students make a rough folded-paper dummy of a short Moth-inspired comic before completing their artwork. Use the miniature pages to test reading order, page turns, and the placement of the magical reveal.
40. Passion	Identify what Moth cares about strongly enough to ask difficult questions or challenge expectations. Encourage students to build their own scene around an emotionally meaningful desire so that the magic serves the character rather than replacing character development.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute task — “Moth’s Magic: Rush, Then Pause.” Minutes 0–3: Revisit a teacher-selected sequence showing Moth’s unexpected magic. Identify one action beat and one reaction beat, and discuss how her wish to fit in complicates the moment. Minutes 3–5: Give students this invented, book-inspired situation: During class, Moth accidentally makes a pencil float, and another student notices. Students decide what Moth wants in this moment and how she feels when the magic becomes visible. Minutes 5–12: Create a four-panel comic: ordinary classroom setup, first sign of magic, floating-pencil reveal, and Moth’s reaction. Keep drawing simple; use dialogue only where it adds necessary information. Minutes 12–16: Revise the comic by inserting a silent anticipation or reaction panel. Students decide whether placing it before or after the reveal better communicates Moth’s feelings. Minutes 16–19: Partners read both versions and identify where their attention lingered. Each reader explains whether the added pause increased suspense, embarrassment, humor, or empathy. Minutes 19–20: Complete an exit sentence: “I changed the pace by ___ so readers would feel ___.” Label the comic as an original scene inspired by The Okay Witch, not an event reproduced from the book.