The fourth solo novel for young readers from Newbery Honor-winning author Darcie Little Badger (A Snake Falls to Earth; Elatsoe) is a fairytale, a ghost story, and a striking narrative about trauma, community, and what we owe to the dead.
In a desert trailer park in Mockingtown, Tex., three Lipan Apache cousins battle with both personal and real ghosts. Sixteen-year-old Maisie's grief over the death of her best friend, Mara, follows like a specter; Joel becomes the unwitting guardian of a lost animal child disguised as a kitten; and Verona is haunted by the very literal ghost that her non-native employers have unearthed by stealing from an ancient burial site.
Hovering above them all is Owl, a spirit only Maisie can see. Owl's presence brought doom to her family's doorstep once before, and he has arrived with vague news of more to come. Maisie, determined to avoid catastrophe, enlists her cousins to help her reverse the tides of fate, and she vows to make amends with whatever forces threaten their family.
Children of Owl is a dreamlike and sophisticated piece of genre fiction that is rooted both in Little Badger's Lipan Apache traditions and the wider well of fantasy. Throughout, Little Badger uses a distinctly native lens to subvert horror and fantasy tropes--such as the haunted Indian burial ground and human transformation into animals and beasts--expanding on Lipan spiritual beliefs around ancestral traditions and animal people. The novel's format fits the author's tone, alternating between third-person narration, diary entries, and comic book pages. Artist Abigail Rajunov's illustrations provide atmosphere, her scratchy, broken line depicting emotive figures with giant eyes. Her art shines in the colors of desert dawns and dusks, featuring golden skies bruised a cool purple and shadows taking on the dark rust of sandstone.
This YA novel contains complexly layered symbolism and figurative storytelling, but Little Badger's prose is strikingly clear, making a somewhat obscure story feel accessible. Owl's presence often acts as a proxy for Maisie's post-traumatic hypervigilance, while Verona becomes a literal voice for her people when the ghost speaks and acts through her. Little Badger's ability meticulously to meld fantastical worlds with Indigenous traditions is what gives this speculative work its satisfying weight and makes it feel entirely, magically possible. --Mariel Fechik DesLaurier, librarian, freelance reviewer, music journalist
Shelf Talker: Children of Owl, Darcie Little Badger's commanding work of YA genre fiction, is a dreamlike tale about trauma, family, and all that we owe to the dead.