Legend of the Guardians by Kathryn Lasky

Owls were my Grandma’s thing. She had thousands around the house–stitched into towels, printed on porcelain, figurines, art made with seeds…. Her house was full of owls. When she passed away in December, Legend of the Guardians had just come to the dollar theatre. I loved the story, the characters, the whole experience, mostly emotionally.

The book is very different. I loved it for the owls, for their beautiful, intelligent world that Lasky imagined. The characters are darling and well developed. The descriptive passages are, for the most part, quite well done. The owl-specific terminology is a little cheesy in some parts and in others doesn’t quite work: “breaklight” instead of “breakfast” betrays very little sense of etymology or word formation. Lasky is not quite the master of inventing a whole new world as Rowlings. She slips up a little here and there.

Also, after Soren’s and Gylfie’s escape from St. Aggie’s, the story drags. I can see why the movie skipped so much. I do love how much we learn about life in the great Ga’Hoole tree, though.

Overall, I would call the writing well done but not masterful. The story line is a genius idea in its essence but could have done with some pruning in the final stages of execution. I oddly found several typos, which is more a criticism of Scholastic Inc. and Lasky’s editor than anything else. After the individual volumes had already appeared before, you’d think they could have ironed out such errors for the combined volume of the first three books.
In any case, it’s a charming read, well worth anyone’s while. I loved it for indulging my inherited love for owls and for endowing them with some further personality and mystery in my imagination.