Owly

I have yet another confession: I'm a sucker for adorable animals. Anything small and fuzzy or fluffy with big eyes will do.

And yet another confession: I'm a huge sucker for owls.

So you can only imagine my delight when I discovered Owly!

One of my favorite graphic novel series, created by Andy Runton, features an adorable little owl named Owly. Owly is incredibly sweet and generous and loves helping everyone around him in the forest. Unfortunately, Owly is also rather lonely living alone in his treehouse. One day he rescues a little worm and nurses him back to health. Wormy is very nervous at first - after all, owls usually eat little guys like him! But soon Wormy begins to realize that Owly is a good friend. Throughout the series Owly and Wormy have many adventures together, making new friends along the way and learning that friendship takes on many forms.

There's no denying that the artwork in these graphic novels is adorable. It's all done in black and white line drawings, and all of the characters are round and sweet and expressive. The characters' expressiveness is especially important when you consider the coolest thing about these books - they're practically wordless. Owly, Wormy, and their friends have lots of dialogue, but when you look inside the speech bubbles you'll see picture symbols instead of words. Why is that so cool? Because anyone can read it! You don't need to have an incredible vocabulary or be able to sound out words to appreciate this story since you just have to be able to interpret the pictures. That means that a child in Kindergarten who can't read yet, a 4th grader, a kid who grew up speaking another language, and these kids' parents will all be able to read and enjoy Owly together.

Just as an example, let's take a look at a page from Owly and Friends, which was created to celebrate Free Comic Book Day in 2008:

In the top panel, we see Owly standing amongst some potted plants and a greenhouse. Look at Owly's hands and the symbols in the speech bubble. By putting the two together, we can guess that Owly is calling for Wormy, who seems to be missing form this picture.

In the next panel, Wormy appears. He's made himself known, and the question mark in the speech bubble indicates that he has a question. Perhaps he's asking Owly what he wants.

Next, Owly tucks a scarf around Wormy's neck. The picture of the thermometer and the arrow, along with the scarf, indicate that Owly is explaining that the weather is getting colder.

In the bottom-left panel, Wormy's face is concerned. There's another question mark in his speech bubble, so he has a question. Look at the picture before the question mark - the plants all have their own scarves. Wormy seems to be asking if they'll give the plants their own scarves to protect them from the cold.

Owly answers Wormy's question in the last panel. There's a slash through the picture that Wormy had used to ask his question, so we can assume that Owly has said that they will not be giving the plants scarves. The next speech bubble illustrates a solution - they will put the plants inside the greenhouse during the winter.

See, that wasn't too hard at all! To read Owly, we just need to take clues from the illustrations and combine them with the symbols in the speech bubbles to understand their meaning.

So if you're looking for a comic with adorable characters, strong messages about friendship and generosity, and something accessible to a wide range of children, Owly is for you! The very first book in the series is Owly: The Way Home & The Bittersweet Summer but each graphic novel stands strongly on its own and they can be read in any order.

Overall Grade: A+