The Okay Witch and the Hungry Shadow

by Emma Steinkellner

In this graphic-novel sequel, thirteen-year-old Moth Hush is learning witchcraft, but magic has not made navigating school, bullying, and self-doubt easy. When an enchanted charm offers a shortcut to becoming more confident and popular, Moth must confront its sinister consequences and decide what kind of person—and witch—she wants to be.

Big Idea

Real confidence grows from self-acceptance, supportive relationships, and choices—not from becoming someone else to win approval. Graphic storytelling makes this struggle visible through the interplay of dialogue, facial expressions, panel sequences, and magical imagery.

Discussion Questions

1.Why does the charm’s promise appeal to Moth? What pressures make changing herself seem easier than accepting herself?
2.How do Moth’s relationships with her friend Charlie, her mother, and Mr. Laszlo offer different kinds of support? When is support difficult for her to recognize or accept?
3.How does the hungry shadow turn an emotional struggle into something readers can see? What can this fantasy element help us understand about insecurity?
4.Find a moment when Moth’s expression or body language tells us something her words do not. How does reading both change your understanding of the scene?
5.How does the book distinguish belonging from popularity? Which of Moth’s choices best reveals that difference?

Lesson Plan

⏱ 50 minutes📦 Copies of the book or legally displayed selected pages, paper, pencils, erasers, colored pencils or markers, optional comic-panel templates, sticky notes.

Learning Goals

Explain how Moth’s choices develop the theme of self-acceptance, using evidence from words and illustrations.
Analyze how panel size, panel sequence, dialogue, and silent moments influence reading pace.
Create two comic sequences that use different pacing techniques to communicate contrasting responses to a problem.
Revise a visual narrative using feedback about clarity, emotional impact, and pacing.

Activity Steps

1.Introduce the lesson by distinguishing confidence from popularity. Establish that students may discuss fictional situations rather than disclose experiences of bullying.
2.Read a teacher-selected sequence involving Moth’s school difficulties or the charm’s appeal. Identify what readers learn from dialogue, expressions, and panel transitions.
3.Model one event in two forms: a quick three-panel sequence and a slower sequence with an added reaction close-up or silent panel. Discuss how the emotional emphasis changes.
4.Have students plan a fictional school encounter and create two four-to-six-panel versions. In one, the character rushes toward an easy solution; in the other, the character pauses and considers help or another choice.
5.Partners read the comics and mark where they sped up, paused, or felt uncertainty. Ask them to identify the visual or verbal feature responsible.
6.Students revise one panel and write an exit response explaining how their pacing choices connect to Moth’s struggle with self-acceptance.

Standards Connections

ELA: CCSS RL.6.2 — Determine a theme and explain how it is conveyed through particular details.
ELA: CCSS RL.6.3 — Describe how a plot unfolds and how characters respond or change.
ELA: CCSS W.6.3 — Develop narratives using effective technique, relevant details, and well-structured event sequences.
ELA: CCSS SL.6.1 — Participate effectively in collaborative discussions and build on others’ ideas.
SEL and visual literacy: Recognize emotions, evaluate choices, and interpret how images and text jointly communicate meaning.

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

In The Okay Witch and the Hungry Shadow, Emma Steinkellner makes an inward conflict—Moth Hush’s wish to feel confident and accepted—visible through school encounters, magical temptation, and an ominous shadow. Because the story is a graphic novel, its writing includes more than the words in speech balloons. Selecting an expression, dividing an action into panels, and deciding when readers see a reaction are all narrative decisions. The Pace-Write-Read study asks students to notice those decisions and then try them in their own work. Begin with a short sequence from Moth’s everyday school life and compare it with a sequence involving the charm or shadow. Students should examine how much happens in each panel, how much text they must read, and where the artwork invites them to linger. More panels do not automatically mean a faster pace: several small panels can slow a brief moment into distinct emotional beats, while a large image can either arrest attention or deliver a sudden impact. The workshop connects craft to meaning. Moth’s desire for an immediate solution can be compared with moments that require reflection, conversation, or recognition of consequences. Students read a sequence, write or sketch an alternative version, and reread it aloud with a partner. The goal is not to imitate every feature of Steinkellner’s art, but to discover how controlling time and attention helps a storyteller communicate vulnerability, temptation, humor, and courage.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
1. Pacing	Compare a school interaction with a magical confrontation involving Moth. Track how panel divisions, dialogue density, and reaction shots change the speed at which readers experience each moment.
2. Plot	Map the chain from Moth’s insecurity to the charm’s appeal and its consequences. Ask students to explain how each decision creates the next problem rather than simply listing events.
3. Prosody	Read a conversation aloud, using balloon punctuation and characters’ expressions to guide stress, pitch, and pauses. Compare how Moth sounds when uncertain versus when projecting confidence.
4. Word	Select a short line Moth speaks and identify the word carrying the strongest emotional weight. Try a synonym and discuss how it changes her attitude or the line’s reading time.
5. Concept	Explore the concept of a magical shortcut to confidence. Ask how the charm and hungry shadow make the abstract costs of seeking approval concrete.
6. Voice & Worldview	Notice how awkward school experiences and magical dangers coexist with humor. Discuss how this combination presents Moth’s problems as serious without treating her as powerless.
7. Point of View	Identify how the narrative centers Moth’s experiences through scene selection and reaction images. Distinguish that visual alignment with her from a claim that every panel literally shows what she sees.
8. Setting & Place	Compare school spaces with spaces associated with Moth’s magical family life. Examine how background details and who occupies a space affect her apparent comfort or isolation.
9. Original Characters	Study how Moth’s appearance, gestures, speech, and choices establish a recognizable character. Contrast these features with Charlie or the talking cat Mr. Laszlo.
10. Dialogue	Choose an exchange in which Moth wants approval or reassurance. Examine how short replies, interruptions, and the order of balloons shape both the conversation’s pace and its emotional meaning.
11. Details	Look for small details in Moth’s face, hands, or posture that reveal discomfort before she explains it. Discuss why a storyteller might show that information instead of adding a speech balloon.
12. Descriptions	Translate a panel showing the charm or shadow into two descriptive sentences. Compare the time needed to read those sentences with the experience of taking in the image.
13. Firsts	Locate the reader’s first encounter with the charm and note what is revealed or withheld. Discuss how this introduction prepares us to understand Moth’s attraction to it.
14. Immediacy & Engagement	Find a panel that places readers close to Moth’s embarrassment, hope, or alarm. Explain how framing and expression make the feeling immediate without a lengthy explanation.
15. Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Compare a fully dramatized conversation with a transition that moves the story ahead. Ask why Steinkellner gives some experiences several beats while passing over other stretches of time.
16. Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Trace how uncertainty about the charm develops into concern about its consequences. Separate suspense about what might happen from surprise at what is actually revealed.
17. Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Check selected pages for shifts to earlier events or endings that leave a question unresolved, and explain their effects when present. If a flash-forward is not found, students can propose one and assess whether it would weaken the mystery surrounding Moth’s choices.
18. Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Inspect the final panel before a page turn during the charm-and-shadow storyline. Ask what readers expect next and whether the following page confirms, delays, or overturns that expectation.
19. Pace & Creativity	Redraw one brief Moth reaction using two panels, then five. Let students discover how expanding a moment creates room for hesitation, mixed feelings, or a new interpretation.
20. Play	Explore how the contrast between ordinary school problems and witchcraft creates playful possibilities. Invent a harmless magical solution to a school inconvenience, then add an unexpected consequence.
21. Performance	Perform a short exchange featuring Moth and another character, including silent gestures between lines. Compare a rushed performance with one that allows time for reactions.
22. Personality	Track which qualities of Moth remain recognizable as her behavior changes around the charm. Discuss how consistent traits and changing choices can coexist in a believable character.
23. Humor	Find a comic beat involving an expression, an awkward interaction, or Mr. Laszlo. Identify the setup and the reaction that completes the joke, then test what happens if that reaction is removed.
24. Pause	Locate a wordless panel or a panel with little dialogue during an emotionally charged sequence. Explain what readers can notice about Moth when the conversation stops.
25. Poetry / Poetic Devices	Read the hungry shadow as a possible visual metaphor for consuming insecurity or desire. Ask students to support their interpretation with events and images rather than assume the symbol has only one meaning.
26. Repetition	Look for recurring images, gestures, or language connected to Moth’s self-doubt and the charm. Discuss how a repeated feature gains meaning as its context changes.
27. Rhythm	Treat a short panel sequence as a series of beats: action, reply, reaction, silence. Compare the rhythm of an uncomfortable school exchange with that of a magical danger scene.
28. Punctuation	Examine punctuation in a worried or emphatic line of Moth’s dialogue. Read it with and without the marks to hear how they guide hesitation, urgency, or intensity.
29. Questions	Distinguish questions characters ask aloud from questions the story creates for readers, such as whether the charm can be trusted. Track how delayed answers encourage continued reading.
30. Compare-Contrast	Compare Moth’s behavior before and after relying on the charm. Use dialogue and visual evidence to distinguish feeling secure from merely appearing confident.
31. Objects	Follow the charm as both a plot-driving object and a symbol of an easy solution. Note how attention to the object redirects attention toward Moth’s desires and decisions.
32. Threes	Choose three moments showing Moth’s changing relationship to the charm and arrange them as attraction, complication, and response. Treat this as an analytical structure, not proof that the book always uses groups of three.
33. Lists	Create parallel lists of what Moth hopes the charm will give her and what her experiences reveal she needs. Turn one list into a comic and examine how item-by-item presentation affects pace.
34. White Space & Negative Space	Study gutters and areas of relatively empty background in selected panels. Ask how separation between panels or space around Moth directs attention and might emphasize a pause or isolation.
35. Art & Graphics	Compare the visual treatment of ordinary school interactions with the hungry shadow’s presence. Analyze line, color, scale, and expression as storytelling tools rather than decoration.
36. Interactives & Gamification	Use a classroom prediction game at a turning point: students propose Moth’s next choice and justify it with evidence. This is a teaching extension, not an interactive feature of the book.
37. Placement	Trace the reading path through a page’s panels and balloons. Discuss how the placement of a reaction or revelation determines when readers receive important information about Moth.
38. Form	Rewrite a brief scene as prose, then compare it with the comic. Identify what the graphic-novel form communicates simultaneously through words and images.
39. Dummy	Create a folded-paper mock-up of an original scene inspired by Moth’s dilemma. Test whether placing a magical consequence before or after a page turn changes anticipation.
40. Passion	Discuss the concerns the story returns to: belonging, dignity, friendship, and accepting an imperfect self. Invite students to build their own scene around a concern they care about, without requiring personal disclosure.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute Pace-Write-It! task: “Before You Use the Charm.” Minutes 0–3: Revisit a teacher-selected sequence showing why the charm appeals to Moth; identify one visual sign of uncertainty. Minutes 3–5: Students plan an imagined, noncanonical moment in which Moth considers using the charm after an uncomfortable school encounter. Minutes 5–12: Draw a five-panel comic: establish the problem, show the tempting shortcut, include a silent hesitation, introduce a supportive voice such as Charlie or Mr. Laszlo, and end with Moth making a choice. Use brief dialogue and vary at least one panel’s size or framing. Minutes 12–16: Partners read the comics, pointing to where they paused and explaining which craft choice caused the pause. Minutes 16–20: Students revise one panel and add a two-sentence explanation of how slowing the moment helped communicate Moth’s conflict between seeking approval and accepting herself.

Classroom Activities

Two Ways Through the Shadow

Students create two short comics about a fictional school situation inspired by Moth’s experiences: feeling excluded, being teased, or wanting approval. Both versions use the same basic events, but one races toward a magical shortcut while the other slows down for reflection and a supportive response. Students manipulate panels, dialogue, and silent beats to explore how pacing changes our understanding of confidence. Suggested audience: grades 5–7; students need not share personal experiences.

Two Ways Through the Shadow

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