Guardians of Ga'Hoole: The Rescue by Kathryn Lasky.
Title: Guardians of Ga'Hoole: The Rescue.
Author: Kathryn Lasky.
Genre: Fiction, animals, YA, adventure, fantasy.
Country: U.S.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 2004.
Summary: Now that Soren has been reunited with his sister, Eglantine, he must face his next challenge: making sense of the mysterious disappearance of his mentor, Ezylryb. When Soren discovers that Ezylryb is in danger, he and his friends Gylfie, Twilight, and Digger devise a plan to save the beloved teacher. In this process, Soren must fight a ferocious foe who wears a terrifying metal beak, sharpened for battle.
My rating: 9/10
♥ The others blinked. They had never thought of Dewlap as mean, just boring. So had Soren until Dewlap had squawked, and he had seen a weird greenish glimmer in her yellow eyes that seemed to mask a stingy gizzard. Soren's mother had always told him that it was a stingy and envious gizzard that made owls mean. His mother had said that envy and stinginess were the worst faults an owl could have. Her words came back to him: There is never any call for envy or stinginess in owls, Soren. We have the sky, we have the great forests and trees. We are the most beautiful fliers on earth. Why would we envy any other bird or animal?
♥ "...Ezylryb made me believe I could do things because I was just me, and not just because I was a Spotted Owl. I hate that thing that you were talking about before."
"What thing?" Soren asked.
"That stuff about purity, that one kind of owl is more pure or better than another. The most ancient order of owls, the owls that all of us are descended from - whether we are Barn Owls, Snowies, Spotted, or whatever - those first owls were all called Glaux. And every owl celebrates the spirit of Glaux. My mum told me that, and it is true. For indeed with that ancient order began a special kind of bird. As owls, we owe our uniqueness, our ability to fly silently, to see through the darkness of the night, to spin our heads almost all the way around to those first owls. And you know from navigation that we call our grandest constellation that shines through every season the Great Glaux. But for those owls that Eglantine talked about, that was not enough. They want to destroy all the others."
♥ The night is not simply black to an owl. There are layers of blackness of different densities. Sometimes the black is thick, a gooey black unleavened by starlight or the moon, and sometimes the black is thin - still black, but an almost transparent sort of blackness. It all has to do with the shine and the set of the moon above, of the constellations rising and vanishing, and the features of the earth below - whether the land is clad in forests or barren and hard with rock. Just as Twilight was an expert at seeing through the very deceptive grays of twilight and dawn, so Soren was skillful in "reading the black" of the full night.