Editor's note: In this excerpt from the Caldecott Medal-winning book written by Jane Yolen and illustrated by John Schoenherr, a father and daughter trek into the woods on a winter's night to see the Great Horned Owl.
We went into the woods.
The shadows
were the blackest things
I had ever seen.
They stained the white snow.
My mouth felt furry,
for the scarf over it
was wet and warm.
I didn't ask
what kinds of things
hide behind black trees
in the middle of the night.
When you go owling
you have to be brave.
Then we came to a clearing
in the dark woods.
The moon was high above us.
It seemed to fit
exactly
over the center of the clearing
and the snow below it
was whiter than the milk
in a cereal bowl.
I sighed
and Pa held up his hand
at the sound.
I put my mittens
over the scarf
over my mouth
and listened hard.
And then Pa called:
"Whoo-whoo-who-who-who-whooooooo.
Whoo-whoo-who-who-who-whoooooooo."
I listened
and looked so hard
my ears hurt
and my eyes got cloudy
with the cold.
Pa raised his face
to call out again,
but before he could open his mouth
an echo
came threading its way
through the trees.
"Whoo-whoo-who-who-who-whooooooo."
Pa almost smiled.
Then he called back:
"Whoo-whoo-who-who-who-whooooooo,"
just as if he
and the owl
were talking about supper
or about the woods
or the moon
or the cold.
I took my mitten
off the scarf
off my mouth,
and I almost smiled, too.
The owl's call came closer,
from high up in the trees
on the edge of the meadow.
Nothing in the meadow moved.
All of a sudden
an owl shadow,
part of the big tree shadow,
lifted off
and flew right over us.
We watched silently
with heat in our mouths,
the heat of all those words
we had not spoken.
The shadow hooted again.
Pa turned on
his big flashlight
and caught the owl
just as it was landing
on a branch.
For one minute,
three minutes,
maybe even a hundred minutes,
we stared at one another.
Then the owl
pumped its great wings
and lifted off the branch
like a shadow without sound.
It flew back into the forest.
"Time to go home,"
Pa said to me.
I knew then that I could talk,
I could even laugh out loud.
But I was a shadow
as we walked home.
When you go owling
you don't need words
or warm
or anything but hope.
That's what Pa says.
The kind of hope
that flies
on silent wings
under a shining
Owl Moon.
From OWL MOON written by Jane Yolen. Text copyright c 1987 by Jane Yolen. Illustrations c 1987 by John Schoenherr. Reprinted by permission of Philomel Books, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.
Pub Date: 01/13/99