Donald Maass Literary Agency

Library Journal: In Khaw’s latest novella, gut-wrenching emotion flows off every page, as readers are introduced to Antigone on the day her black dog of death arrives, enters her home, and makes itself comfortable. Antigone’s family members have a history of understanding when their deaths are coming. When Antigone’s mother knew, eight years ago, she decided to die by suicide. Now living in her mother’s former home and still actively navigating her grief, Antigone helps others with their own ghost problems, reminding them that hauntings aren’t only about the dead; the living must choose to let go. After a particularly difficult and angry interaction with a mother haunting her daughter, Antigone begins to plan her own suicide, counting down the days, black dog by her side. With a plot both deceptively simple and extremely deep, language that’s precise and lyrical, and a tone both dreamlike and realistic, Khaw steeps readers in a tale overshadowed by death but bursting with life.

VERDICT: Khaw writes another stunningly evocative and compelling story. Suggest this modern myth to fans of Helen Oyeyemi and readers who enjoyed the equally brilliant Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield or Coup de Grâce by Sofia Ajram.

Shelf Awareness: The fourth solo novel for young readers from Newbery Honor-winning author Darcie Little Badger (A Snake Falls to Earth; Elatsoe) is a fairytale, a ghost story, and a striking narrative about trauma, community, and what we owe to the dead.

In a desert trailer park in Mockingtown, Tex., three Lipan Apache cousins battle with both personal and real ghosts. Sixteen-year-old Maisie’s grief over the death of her best friend, Mara, follows like a specter; Joel becomes the unwitting guardian of a lost animal child disguised as a kitten; and Verona is haunted by the very literal ghost that her non-native employers have unearthed by stealing from an ancient burial site.

Hovering above them all is Owl, a spirit only Maisie can see. Owl’s presence brought doom to her family’s doorstep once before, and he has arrived with vague news of more to come. Maisie, determined to avoid catastrophe, enlists her cousins to help her reverse the tides of fate, and she vows to make amends with whatever forces threaten their family.

Children of Owl is a dreamlike and sophisticated piece of genre fiction that is rooted both in Little Badger’s Lipan Apache traditions and the wider well of fantasy. Throughout, Little Badger uses a distinctly native lens to subvert horror and fantasy tropes–such as the haunted Indian burial ground and human transformation into animals and beasts–expanding on Lipan spiritual beliefs around ancestral traditions and animal people. The novel’s format fits the author’s tone, alternating between third-person narration, diary entries, and comic book pages. Artist Abigail Rajunov’s illustrations provide atmosphere, her scratchy, broken line depicting emotive figures with giant eyes. Her art shines in the colors of desert dawns and dusks, featuring golden skies bruised a cool purple and shadows taking on the dark rust of sandstone.

This YA novel contains complexly layered symbolism and figurative storytelling, but Little Badger’s prose is strikingly clear, making a somewhat obscure story feel accessible. Owl’s presence often acts as a proxy for Maisie’s post-traumatic hypervigilance, while Verona becomes a literal voice for her people when the ghost speaks and acts through her. Little Badger’s ability meticulously to meld fantastical worlds with Indigenous traditions is what gives this speculative work its satisfying weight and makes it feel entirely, magically possible.