by Moe Zilla

Created on: March 08, 2010

"He wore a cloak of softest wide and a wide hat with a feather in it..."

Eve Bunting describes "The Man Who Could Call Down Owls," and he's shown in black and white illustrations by Charles Mikolaycak. Fascinated villagers watch as the strange man stops at the first clearing in the woods every night. Mikolaycak draws him lit by a ring of candles in the snow - as he raises a willow wand over his head. And then the owls came...

Eve Bunting describes the scene's mystery and magic. "They came swooping on noiseless wings. To perch on his shoulders. To perch on his wand." Animals always have a silent mystery all their own. But in this book, one man cracks the secret, since every night, the owls return.

And once that mystery is established, Bunting adds some extra, intriguing details. The man works in an owl barn by day, where he mends the wings of owls or splints injured legs. How does he find the owls needing his help, a boy asks? "They find me," the man replies.

Soon in the night clearing, the boy travels along with the owl man. There's a barn owl in the trees, and it turns its heads around to watch. A great horned owl lands on a nearby branch. And an elf owl flies down and nestles in the man's hat.

"Owls everywhere..."

Bunting is sharing a love of nature, and her story gives readers a chance to experience it too. But there has to be villain, and eventually she introduces "a stranger" who envies the man's power to seemingly command the animals. The next day it's the stranger who enters the clearing with the willow wand and the white cloak of the owl man. He pushes the boy aside, admits that he's stolen the clothing, and smiles in anticipation of the powers he expects to receive.

"The strangers smile was cold as death," Bunting writes, but the villagers still gather to watch him in the clearing. And then a new kind of owl appears in the clearing. This time it's a great snowy owl, which the boy describes as beautiful and rare. "It shimmered above the clearing, its giant wings whitening the earth below." And then boy reaches a strange conclusion - that the owl is the man.

The story ends with a weird and violent climax - and Mikolaycak actually draws the sttranger with a bleeding scratch on his cheek where a flurry of owls has attacked him. A long drop of blood drips to the snow, and the stranger flees to the woods, never to bother the owls again. In the final page, it's the little boy who's become the owl's new companion.

"Chirping and screeching and filling the night with love, the owls came."

Learn more about this author, Moe Zilla.
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