Children of Owl

by Darcie Little Badger, Abigail Rajunov (Illustrator)

From the peerless master of contemporary fantasy comes a tale of three cousins and the world of creatures, ghosts, and murderers that surrounds their trailer park. Illustrated throughout with comics pages!

Maisie: hasn't gotten her life back on track since her best friend died and she saw Owl, harbinger of ill tidings and doom.
Joel: Streaming prodigy with questionable decision-making who's been exiled to a summer of kitten fostering.
Verona: will do anything to leave their trailer park behind, even watch a house she knows is haunted.
Owl: son of Big Owl, who can't help who he is, or how much he cares about these aforementioned humans.

Their four stories intertwine with a ghost bent on justice, an adorable feline Animal Person, and a vengeful monster headed straight for them in this singular YA fantasy novel from Newbery Honor-winning Darcie Little Badger.

Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult, Middle Grade, Mystery, Indigenous, Contemporary, Comics

272 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication October 6, 2026

About the author

Lipan Apache geoscientist, writer, and fan of the weird, haunting, and beautiful.

Reviews

[Ricarda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish more people would read from or even know of Darcie Little Badger, because her books are very dear to me. She's a Lipan Apache writer and she weaves such intriguing contemporary fantasy stories from this heritage. Her debut novel Elatsoe is one of my all-time favorite books and her later works never disappointed me either. Children of Owl is a glimpse into the lives of a group of Lipan Apache teenagers in a small desert town. Maisie is grieving the death of her best friend Mara and is desperately trying to find the time capsule that she buried, Verona is housesitting for a rich white family and their ranch is most definitely cursed, and Joel is trying very hard to make a viral video and become famous but spends the summer with a bunch of shelter cats instead. Everyone is more or less just living their life, but when the shapeshifting owl boy flies down from his mountain and tells Maisie that he senses tragedy approaching, there's this feeling of doom hanging over it all. Maisie is desperate to prevent anything bad from happening to the people of her hometown while she is also always trying to help her friends. There was this strong sense of community and family radiating from these pages and I loved the story for that alone. The author really knows how to capture the core of a relationship within a few chapters or through a single flashback, and it made the characters feel very real to me. Their struggles were presented so well without ever addressing them directly and I could perfectly picture this community that loves you, but also knows everything about you, remembers all your mistakes and has certain prejudices and expectations because of that. The theme of escaping a set path was executed very well in my opinion and the perspective of indigenous characters added such history and depth to it. The different plotlines all had my interest, but I wish that they were balanced more. There's the plot about Owl, about the cats, about the haunted ranch, about a murder a couple of years ago and sometimes the story switched rather unnaturally between all these things or ended them abruptly. The book could have been longer with more explanation in between to flesh everything out completely. But overall I had a great time reading this book. It also comes with full-color comic panels that continue the story visually and plenty of journal entries that make the characters feel more distinct from one another and give the opportunity to really dive into their thoughts. I can imagine that other readers would dislike the switch from 3rd person to 1st person narrative, but I didn't mind. I wouldn't go as far to call this a real mixed media book, especially since the comic pages were few and far between the regular chapters, but the format, too, definitely made this a memorable read for me.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and Levine Querido for providing a digital arc in exchange for an honest review.

[Emily Pencil · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such a bizarre book, in the best way possible. I loved the multi media elements of the story, the journal entries with the comics really brought the story to life. This was a fun, weird, fantasy that covered a lot, at some points I think it went a little too long, however I still did very much enjoy my time reading this.

Thank you NetGalley and Levine Querido for the opportunity to read this ARC.

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you Edelweiss for an advanced copy.

A beautiful blend of humanity, family, and doing hard things for those we love all with scary tension. Mixed media is used to great and adds to the layers of stories within stories.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

The publisher is calling this a "hybrid," with journal entries and twenty-five pages of comics combined with the prose story, but I think they're overselling that: the comics take up less than ten percent of the book and some of the pages are just black with white text. The journal entries are more frequent, but I found the switches between their first person POV and the rest of the book's third person to be jarring.

I did find the story interesting and I liked the characters, but I often felt the book rambled and didn't have a clear focus.

Received via NetGalley.

[Ms. Yingling · Rating 3 out of 5]

E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

Review to come closer to publication date.

[Mariel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Darcie writes like no one else. This is a magical piece of art.