Owls in the Family

Owls in the Family

• Genre: Fiction; middle grade realistic
• Originally Published: 1961
• Reading Level/Interest: Lexile 980L; grades 3-7
• Structure/Length: 11 chapters; approximately 91 pages
• Protagonist and Central Conflict: Billy, a young boy who lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, loves animals and has a large menagerie of pets that includes magpies, gophers, a dog, and some crows. The addition of two great horned owls, however, might be too many pets when they start turning the town upside down.  
• Potential Sensitivity Issues: Animal abuse; outdated, insensitive references to Indigenous and Middle Eastern communities

Farley Mowat, Author

• Bio: 1921-2014; Canadian writer and environmentalist; great-great-nephew to Ontario premier Sir Oliver Mowat; wrote about birds in a column for the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix when he was a teenager; studied zoology at University of Toronto but never graduated; fought in Italy during World War II; after battle fatigue, became an Intelligence Officer and worked in the Netherlands to start food drops that saved thousands of lives; was once denied entry to the United States for being a suspected communist sympathizer, which he fought and eventually won; holds nine honorary doctorates; was honored with the Canadian Centennial Medal (1967), the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Medal (1977), and the Knight of Mark Twain distinction (1980); was made an Officer of the Order of Canada (1981)
• Other Works: People of the Deer (1952); Lost in the Barrens (1956); Never Cry Wolf (1963); My Discovery of America (1985)