Children of Owl, the fourth solo novel for young readers from Newbery Honor-winning author Darcie Little Badger (A Snake Falls to Earth; Elatsoe) and illustrated by Abigail Rajunov (If I Lived in the Sky), is a fairy tale, a ghost story, and a striking narrative about trauma, community, and what is owed to the dead.
In a desert trailer park in Mockingtown, Tex., three Lipan Apache cousins battle with personal and real ghosts. Sixteen-year-old Maisie's grief over the death of her best friend, Mara, follows her 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 Maisie's family's doorstep once before, and he has arrived with vague news of more to come. Maisie 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 commanding, dreamlike, and sophisticated piece of genre fiction rooted in Little Badger's Lipan Apache traditions and the wider well of fantasy. The novel's format fits the author's tone, alternating between third-person narration, diary entries, and comic book pages. Rajunov's illustrations provide atmosphere, her scratchy, broken line depicting emotive figures with giant eyes. Little Badger's ability to meticulously 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