Owls in the Family

I can't remember if I read Owls in the Family to myself or if it was read to me, but I know that I got to know the story when I was pretty young. And ever since then, every time I see the book cover or hear someone mention the title, I get a really warm nostalgic feeling because Owls in the Family was a book that made me absurdly happy.

That is Farley Mowat's gift, really. He writes beautiful, and often hilarious, books about animals and their interactions with people and after you've read them they become part of how you think about that animal forever. Owls in the Family made me think it was totally possible to have owls as pets when I was a kid, and it made every owl hoot I've heard since seem like a chord in some nighttime symphony.

Owls are amazing in their own right, but Mowat gave them a kind of life and personality in his story that made them so much more accessible to me as a little kid.

A number of Farley Mowat's books are being released and the Globe and Mail is doing a 10-week series featuring excerpts from the different books. This week's is Owls in the Family, which you can check out here (the excerpt is from chapter 7 and it's a wonderful read).