Owl Moon

Title: Owl Moon

Author: Jane Yolen

Genre: Realistic Fiction

Summary: Late one winter night, a son and his father went owling. There was silence outside, except a train whistle sounding like a sad song. Next, they heard dogs beginning to sound with the train. Pa and the boy walked toward the woods. The snow was crisp. Pa always said that if you want to go owling, you have to be quiet. He had been waiting to go owling with Pa for a very long time. They reached the line of black and pointy pine trees against the sky. Pa stopped, looked up and starting calling “whoo-whoo,” the sound of a Great Horned Owl. He called out several times, and after each time, he was silent for a moment to listen. They didn’t hear anything, but the boy’s brother had told him that sometimes there is an owl and sometimes there isn’t, so he wasn’t too disappointed. They went on, quietly, because if you go owling, you have to be quiet and make your own heat. When you go owling, you have to be brave, so the boy didn’t ask Pa what was behind the black trees in the middle of the night. The snow was whiter than the milk in a cereal bowl. They stopped again. Pa held up his hands and called for the owls again. They got no response. Before he raised his hand a third time, an echo came threading its way through the trees. The owl’s call came closer and closer. All of a sudden, they saw a shadow fly right over them. They watched silently and the shadow hooted again. Pa turned on his flashlight and caught the light on the owl just as it was landing on a branch. For a while, the owl stared at Pa and the boy. The owl then pumped its wings and lifted off of the branch, like a shadow. It flew back into the forest. He knew now that he could talk on the way home, but he was just a shadow. “When you go owling, you don’t need words or warm or anything but hope. That’s what Pa says. The kind of hope that flies on silent wings under a shining Owl Moon.”

Characters: Little boy, Pa, owl

Setting: the woods, a forest

Plot: See an owl while owling

Theme: N/A

Opinion: I didn’t like this book as much as some of the others. I didn’t really understand the point of it and I thought it was a little boring. I thought it started out slowly and I just never really was able to get into it and enjoy the read.