Owls in the Family [Paperback]

Farley Mowat (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 30, 1996 | Age Range: 8 and up | Lexile Measure: 980L (What's this?)

The adventures of two owls who shake up an entire neighborhood and turn a house topsy-turvy.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Every child needs to have a pet. No one could argue with that.

But what happens when your pet is an owl, and your owl is terrorizing the neighbourhood?

In Farley Mowat?s exciting children?s story, a young boy?s pet menagerie ? which includes crows, magpies, gophers and a dog ? grows out of control with the addition of two cantankerous pet owls. The story of how Wol and Weeps turn the whole town upside down is warm, funny, and bursting with adventure and suspense. --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

About the Author

Farley Mowat was born in Belleville, Ontario, in 1921, and grew up in Belleville, Trenton, Windsor, Saskatoon, Toronto, and Richmond Hill. He served in World War II from 1940 until 1945, entering the army as a private and emerging with the rank of captain. He began writing for his living in 1949 after spending two years in the Arctic. Since 1949 he has lived in or visited almost every part of Canada and many other lands, including the distant regions of Siberia. He remains an inveterate traveller with a passion for remote places and peoples. He has twenty-five books to his name, which have been published in translations in over twenty languages in more than sixty countries. They include such internationally known works as People of the Deer, The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be, Never Cry Wolf, Westviking, The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float, Sibir, A Whale for the Killing, The Snow Walker, And No Birds Sang, and Virunga: The Passion of Dian Fossey. His short stories and articles have appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, Maclean’s, Atlantic Monthly and other magazines.


From the Hardcover edition. --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Age Range: 8 and up
  
• Paperback: 91 pages
• Publisher: Yearling; Reprint edition (March 30, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0440413613
• ISBN-13: 978-0440413615
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.5 x 7.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #15,092 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #43 in Books > Children's Books > Animals > Birds

More About the Author

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Owls in the Family November 27, 2002

By Jeff T. Smecker

Format:Paperback

Read Owls in the Family. It is a great book because it has lots of information about great horned owls. This book is about two boys, Bruce and Billy. They go on an adventure to find an owls nest. The boys end up getting two owls who become their best friends. The two owls Wol and Weeps become best friends. Billy's dog Mutt doesn't get along with Wol, but gets along with Weeps. Wol is always stealing Mutt's bone and he gets so annoyed. It's very exciting, funny, and an interesting book. Borrow it or buy it at your nearest bookstore.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars It IS Farley Mowat's most hilarious book! January 19, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

If you're new to the writings of Farley Mowat, this book is a great place to start. You will love it. If you have kids, THEY will love it. Wol and Weeps, the two feathered protagonists, are two of the most lovable pets you'll ever read about in print. Wol especially steals the show when it comes to dealing with crows, dogs, skunks, and a really mean French teacher called Fifi.

Make no mistake, Owls in the Family is a family treasure that deserves to be read time and again. Pick it up without hesitation!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars delightful tale about owls July 10, 2011

By Wayne S. Walker VINE™ VOICE

Format:Unknown Binding

In this perhaps slightly fictionalized account originally published in 1961 in The Atlantic Monthly, the author, who apparently went by the name Billy when he was a boy, tells how he and his friend Bruce and their dogs Mutt and Rex, who live on the prairie in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, find an owls' nest with three baby owls in it while on a hike in the nearby bluffs. They determine to add owls to their collection of pets. At first, Mr. Mowat is against the idea because the boys already have enough pets, but when he realizes that the owls might eat Billy's rats, rabbits, and gophers, he decides that maybe owls wouldn't be so bad after all.
Sometime later, after a bad storm, the boys, along with another friend named Murray, return to find the owl nest blown down and two of the now half-grown young owls dead. However, a third, probably the oldest, had survived in a pile of brush, so Billy adopts it and names it Wol. Shortly after that, he finds another owl that a couple of mean boys had captured and were tormenting. Buying the bird, he names it Weeps. The book tells how Wol brings dead skunks to the family for dinner and terrorizes Billy's French teacher, the postman, Ophelia the maid, and the minister, how Weeps never does learn how to fly and is afraid of everything except Mutt, and how the two birds shake up the whole neighborhood during the T. Eaton Department Store parade. But when Billy's dad gets a new job in Toronto and they can't take the owls with them, what will Billy do?
This book is a delightful tale that has practically nothing objectionable. A few euphemisms (heck, darn, and gee) occur. During his investigation of the owls' nest, Mr. Miller, the boys' teacher, was "yelling some strange things" while attacked by the mother owl up in the tree, and was drinking from a bottle what he called "cold tea" after he fell down. These may be perfectly innocent references, but parents of younger children might want to know about them. Mowat, who was born in 1921 and for nearly fifty years has written about the lands, seas, and peoples of Canada and the Far North, said in a note, "Were Wol and Weeps real owls? Of course they were! And Mutt and Rex and Murray and Bruce and I were real." We have read and enjoyed Mowat's book Lost in the Barrens (1956). The earlier adventures of Billy and Mutt were chronicled in The Dog Who Wouldn't Be (1957). Boys and girls of all ages, both those who are animal lovers and those who just enjoy a good story, will like Owls in the Family.