New Middle Grade: Avenging the Owl by Melissa Hart (post by Paul Greci)

Being an owl enthusiast, avid outdoors-person, and a writer of middle grade wilderness adventure stories, I jumped at the opportunity for an Advance Reading Copy of Melissa Hart’s new book, Avenging the Owl. 

Melissa Hart

 Melissa has published multiple articles and essays and two nonfiction books:

Wild Within: How Rescuing Owls Inspired a Family

Gringa: A Contradictory Childhood

Avenging the Owl is her first middle grade novel!!

Covercopy for Avenging the Owl:

Thirteen-year old Solo Hahn boasts a big-screen TV, a room full of surfing trophies, and a beach house in Southern California. Then his father, worn down by a Hollywood career, attempts suicide, and his mother moves the family to a trailer in Oregon where a Great-horned owl attacks the only thing that matters to him. When Solo tries to shoot the bird and injures a neighbor boy with Down syndrome, he’s forced to do community service at a raptor rescue center with his newly-sworn enemies . . . owls.

Without giving anything away, i.e. no spoilers, I enjoyed the complex relationships Solo has with his parents, his neighbors, and the people he works with at the raptor rescue center. When you combine this character-driven story with a setting that shines, you get a page-turning tale. 

One aspect of the main character, Solo, that I loved was that he is a budding screen-writer and would use his scene-writing to process things going on around him. The scene-writing in script form also provided variety in the narrative and kept the story moving forward at the same time.

Avenging the Owl, published by Sky Pony Press,hits the shelves in Hardcover on April 5^th.

Congrats, Melissa!!