The Owl Keeper

Christine Brodien-Jones's The Owl Keeper is a dark, dreamy fantasy for 9 year olds about a boy who's only allowed out after the sun goes down.

What happens

Max Unger has been told he's allergic to sunlight. So he sleeps all day in a house with the curtains pegged shut. Once a week a grinning doctor gives him an injection that hurts more every time.

At night, though, he sneaks out to a tree in the middle of a field. Up in its branches he's hiding a small silver owl with a broken wing. He feeds her mice and grubs while her wing mends.

Silver owls are supposed to be extinct. Now the government wants any that are left hunted down and destroyed.

Then a barefoot girl with a mad burst of copper hair turns up under his tree. Her name is Rose. She says she isn't scared of anything (and she swings upside down from the branches to prove it).

The world around them is grim. There's one radio station, cities being built under domes and a brand new prison for children. People are told to report their neighbours for saying the wrong thing.

It's a shivery, atmospheric read. You really feel how lonely Max is. He's anxious, he bites his nails and he misses his gran, who used to take him owl-hunting in the dark. So when Rose calls him mysterious instead of weird, it's a lovely moment.

Keep in mind it's properly creepy in places. Max's nightmares are vivid and a bit gross. In them he turns into a slobbering winged creature that wants to attack his own owl. The injections are painful to read about, and his gran died when he was seven.

For a reader who enjoys a mystery with a chill to it, that's all part of the pull. Why is the doctor so interested in Max's dreams? You'll want to know as much as Max does.

What to read next

If they love the idea of a child nursing an injured owl, An Owl Called Star is a gentler one in the library. Jasmine and Tom find a barn owl lying in the brambles by an old barn, still warm.