Owl in Love

by Patrice Kindl

Book Overview

Owl Tycho, a shape-shifter who can turn into an owl at will, falls in love with her science teacher, Mr. Lindstrom, and while keeping vigil outside, encounters another possible owl/human in a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0395661625
• ISBN13: 9780395661628
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Harcourt Brace and Company
• Length: 204 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.6"
• Age Range: 12 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 7 and higher

Customer Reviews

Offbeat, delightful fantasy coming of age

Owl in Love takes some familiar YA stories and makes them completely new! Like the best in children's fantasy, the magical elements are treated matter-of-factly and mundanely-- making them stand out in even greater relief.Owl is a wereowl-- girl by day, owl by night. She perches on a tree outside of her science teacher's house and pines for him. Her witch parents are worried, because Owl isn't doing enough hunting. (what a great detail-- her parents are like any concerned parents anywhere, except their lives don't really belong to 20th century America). Kids sometimes tease Owl because they rarely see her eat (she's been known to bring mouse sandwiches to school, though).Owl finally does make a friend, and this both enriches and complicates her life. The book wraps itself up delightfully-- Owl gets over her crush in a satisfying and original way (hint: the science teacher has a tragic secret involving a child...) and Owl learns she can trust her friend with her secret.The book's originality and magic had me laughing and marvelling, but the story of a misfit-- a girl with talents that both make her interesting and set her apart-- is one that lots of kids can relate to. Heck, lots of adults. This book is full of charm and insight and is a terrific read.

Original. Interesting. Insightful. What more could you want?

Owl is different. Her name is strange, her facial shape is strange, her food is strange (i mean, it consists of mice and rodents!) She's just plain different. And as much as she tries to hide it, either by secretly squeezing mice into her sandwiches or by making no contact with regular human children, she knows she is a wereowl, not human. A shape shifter. Different. And what makes it all worse is that she's in love. That's the real way to complicate a young adolescent's life still more, and Owl for one takes hers very seriously. Her infatuated crush may seem a little stange to readers, but Owl is plainly smitten with her thirty-something-year-old science teacher, Mr. Linstrom. And to tie the plot through, Owl finds that there is a strange lunatic boy hanging around her darling Mr. Linstrom's house. And the plot thickens.Overall, Owl's uncanny strangeness, cool descriptions, and overall imaginative plot, you'll find this book and interesting read, despite the fact that the book is cute, fun, and interesting, rather than interllectually stimulating.

This book is great

I really thought this book was quite good...it includes all the great problems and joys of being a wereowl. However, one thing I must say about this book is that you begin to find the crush on her teacher a bit shallow once you are into the book. Also, I solved it before the ending, but I enjoyed reading it, because I found the characters, and their problems quite well written out. Memorable characters include her parents, who are weird wiccan(perhaps)/hippies who live in a shack at the edge of the forest. Also, I found the teacher an interesting character towards the end. I would reccomend this book to those new to lite fantasy, or were-books.

Delightfully original

An absolute delight: witty, charming, heartfelt, and original. Owl has some problems that will be familiar to any teenager: her difficulty fitting in and making friends; her crush on a teacher; the strange but cute boy her own age; parents who are well-meaning but don't understand. But those common issues are seen from the point of view of a character who is literally alien, as much owl as she is girl. The result is both startling and funny, and makes these archetypal problems and their resolution seem fresh and new. The characters are all sympathetic and believable, if odd. Utterly unique.

True Romance--From that Weird Kid in School

You've seen them around. Those weird kids, as a lot of people would call them. The ones who don't act "normal", don't dress "normal", or is "just plain freaky" because they aren't something you are. My friend Bobby would call them freaks of nature, but let's not get into that. Well, what if that weird kid was more than meets the eye? Sure, Owl, at 14, eats real (albeit dead) rats in her sandwiches, but who would have thought that she lived up to her namesake as a were-owl? And we thought her parents were just down-and-out hippies. Well, they are, sort of. Anyways, her eating rats in public don't go over too well with that elite popular crowd, but she doesn't care because she found her mate: her science teacher. Every night, she stalks-er, watches- her-harumph!-love from a tree. In her owl form, of course, or else she'd look like an idiot perched on that thingy. But all that changes when the new owl in town flies over the cuckoo's nest... A really good story for the kid who always didn't feel "normal" or "didn't fit in". Try being the kid who REALLY didn't fit in or ISN'T normal.