Elf Dog and Owl Head

Description

A Newbery Honor Book

From the singular imagination of National Book Award winner M. T. Anderson comes a magical adventure about a boy and his dog—or a dog and her boy—and a forest of wonders hidden in plain sight.

Clay has had his fill of home life. A global plague has brought the world to a screeching halt, and with little to look forward to but a summer of video-calling friends, vying with annoying sisters for the family computer, and tuning out his parents’ financial worries, he’s only too happy to retreat to the woods. From the moment the elegant little dog with the ornate collar appears like an apparition among the trees, Clay sees something uncanny in her. With this mysterious Elphinore as guide, he’ll glimpse ancient secrets folded all but invisibly into the forest. Each day the dog leads Clay down paths he never knew existed, deeper into the unknown. But they aren’t alone in their surreal adventures. There are traps and terrors in the woods, too, and if Clay isn’t careful, he might stray off the path and lose his way forever. Graced with evocative black-and-white illustrations by Junyi Wu, Elf Dog and Owl Head is heartfelt and exhilarating, wry and poignant, seamlessly merging the fantastic and the familiar in a tale both timely and timeless.Anderson’s work is invariably funny and piercingly intelligent and never quite what you expect. . . His new novel, “Elf Dog & Owl Head," is a kind of inverted Narnia story: Instead of children stumbling on a portal to a magical world, a dog scampers out of a magical world and into our own. . . . One of the quietly subversive facets of this gem of a novel is the way it moves past the easy dyad that frames our world as a mundane wasteland and the other one as a magical paradise. Anderson writes as eloquently about the joys of reality as he does about the Otherworld, and he makes the case, without straining, that mundanity has its own magic.
—The New York Times Book Review

It is not hyperbole to say that M. T. Anderson is one of the greatest living writers, in any genre and for every age group. It might even be an understatement.
—Adam Gidwitz, author of The Inquisitor’s Tale, a Newbery Honor Book

Delightful, amusing, and imaginative! Elf Dog and Owl Head proves that great stories are good medicine.
—Cynthia Leitich Smith, best-selling author of Sisters of the Neversea

Writing with his characteristic precision, Anderson melds the fantastic with the everyday to often riotous effect while also gently schooling Clay and readers in cross-cultural communication. It all comes to a thrilling climax on Midsummer’s Eve before a bittersweet, perfectly pitched denouement. Wu’s lovely, textured pencil drawings add eldritch warmth. . . . A hilarious, heartfelt triumph.
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Revisiting the setting of his Norumbegan Quartet and layering the everyday with intriguing lands and creatures, Anderson expertly balances the anguish of pandemic-era isolation with the transporting joys of new friendships. Stylized b&w pencil art from Wu punctuate this wryly told fantasy.
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A veritable plum pudding of energetic action and witty delights, but a -foundation of traditional folklore elements—standing stones, half-buried sleeping giants, fairy mischief, portals to the underworld, the Wild Hunt, and predatory wyrms—creates an underlying hint of genuine menace. . . . Balancing this chill is the devoted relationship between Clay and his dog companion, a theme that stands sturdily in the middle of the mayhem. Black-and-white full-page pencil illustrations contribute to both coziness and eeriness.
—The Horn Book

A charming, fantastical spin on the familiar kid/dog story, right down to their tragic separation being quickly followed by a heartwarming reunion. . . . There’s a lot for contemporary kids to relate to here: Clay’s loneliness, his sister’s anger at being forced to stay home, his parents’ constant worry, and the general unfairness of the entire situation. Holding all that chaotic emotion together and framing it with a well-developed fantasy world is an impressive feat, and Anderson, as usual, does it with aplomb.
—The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

The world of M.T. Anderson’s Elf Dog and Owl Head, hauntingly rendered in Junyi Wu’s bold crosshatched pencil illustrations, is complex, broken, hopeful and real, even in its most fantastical moments. . . upends familiar tropes with imagination, poignancy and just enough realism to allow the reader to see themselves in at least one character. . . . Like Clay, readers will want to continue to explore, even when they feel afraid to take the next step.
—BookPage

This playful romp pulls magic into the mundane and gives regular kids the chance to be heroes while Wu’s cross-hatched pencil illustrations dust the proceedings with further enchantment.
—Booklist

Themes of the unbreakable bonds of friendship, sibling relationships, the love between a boy and his dog, and the triumph of good over evil play out in this page-turner of a novel. Many chapters end on a cliff hanger, making this title an ideal read aloud. . . . Students will be drawn to this clever, magical novel.
—School Library Connection

A sparkling fantasy by the ever-inventive M.T. Anderson. . . . Much of the early humor in this very funny book comes from the disjunction between ordinary human things and the astonishing stuff of elsewhere. . . . Dramatic story turns, witty dialogue and zestful monochrome drawings by Junyi Wu combine to make a reading treat for 8- to 12-year-olds.
—The Wall Street Journal

Anderson’s tale is filled with mysterious creatures – grouchy buried giants, hungry wyrms, owl-headed people – but also with very real longings for friendship and connection that, to the isolated Clay and his sisters, feel at least as magical as the alternate worlds they stumble upon.
—The Virginian Pilot

Elf Dog and Owl Head is a heart-filled, magic-steeped tale of getting through a pandemic that’s very like Covid in the early 2020s. The narrative by M.T. Anderson and black-and-white illustrations by Junyi Wu are evocative and thrilling, as an elf dog finds herself in our world and is taken in by a family whose members are really getting on one another’s nerves in the quarantine. . . . this story has something to offer on many levels — a classic boy-and-his-dog adventure, a magical quest that bridges worlds, a lot of authentically snarky but deeply affectionate dialogue, characters that grab and warm your heart — and it’s a joy for adult as well as kid readers to be there as it unfolds.
—Common Sense Media

The author creates an unusual, relatable world as the backdrop for a story of friendship and love. Young readers will connect with a boy’s close bond with his dog and they’ll empathize with his struggles to save it.
—Young Adult Books Central

Graced with evocative black-and-white illustrations by Junyi Wu, Elf Dog and Owl Head is heartfelt and exhilarating, wry and poignant, seamlessly merging the fantastic and the familiar in a tale both timely and timeless.
—Young Adult Books CentralM. T. Anderson is the author of Feed, a National Book Award Finalist; the National Book Award winner The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party and Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves, which were both Michael L. Printz Honor Books; Symphony for the City of the Dead; Yvain: The Night of the Lion; Landscape with Invisible Hand; and many other books for children and young adults, including The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge, cocreated with Eugene Yelchin, which was a National Book Award Finalist. M. T. Anderson lives near Boston, Massachusetts.

Junyi Wu is the illustrator of several books, including Two Bicycles in Beijing by Teresa Robeson; Beatrix Potter, Scientist by Lindsay H. Metcalf; and the Newbery Honor Book Scary Stories for Young Foxes by Christian McKay Heidicker. Junyi Wu is a graduate of ArtCenter College of Design and is based in Orange County, California.Chapter One
 
It was Monday, so they were hunting wyrms in the petrified forest. That’s what the Queen Under the Mountain always scheduled for Monday. The pack of elf-hounds bounded past stone trees, barking and howling. They poured through the wood like a tide. Behind them rode dukes and duchesses, lords and ladies, servants and sorcerers. Huntsmen blew huge, curling horns.
   They chased a wyrm that was old and clever. She slithered over boulders and under fallen trees of metal, glancing back to see if she had lost the elf-hounds yet. Several times, they paused to catch the scent of her again. They sniffed the cavern air. Then one of the dogs spotted the flick of the wyrm’s tail, barked warning, and plunged after the monster. The whole pack followed.
   The whole pack except for one. She was a young elf-hound, slim and elegant, with bright, sharp eyes. She held back. She watched the other dogs surge forward. Her eye was caught by movement far off to the side, up a hill of marble oak trees with spreading branches. She had seen the wyrm’s children, squiggly baby wyrms: the mother was leading the dog pack away from them on purpose so her children could escape. The elf-hound watched the infant wyrms flee unnoticed.
   The lords and ladies rode up behind the elf-hound. They would reward her if she led the whole Royal Hunt to the fleeing young.
   “What’s wrong with this one?” asked one of the knights. “She’s just standing there.”
   “She’d be one of our best dogs,” said the Master of the Hunt, “if she wasn’t always dreaming of something else.”
   “Well,” said a duke, “force her to get moving! She should join the rest of the pack!”
   “Go, girl!” yelled the Master of the Hunt, and he kicked out at her with his boot to let her know who was boss.
   The elegant elf-hound stared at him coldly. He didn’t deserve to know what she’d seen. Almost smiling, she started after the pack again, barking as loudly as she could, as if she’d never noticed the young wyrm efts scrambling to safety up the hill. As if she’d never figured out the old wyrm’s plan, leading the Hunt away from the precious young.
   She reached the pack, hopping over huge mushrooms and shelves of fungus. Easily, she soared past stragglers.
   The People Under the Mountain kept the petrified forest stocked with wyrms and basilisks and other hungry beasts, just so they could hunt them without having to risk going aboveground. Outside the caves, above the mountain, the woods were deeper and wider, but sometimes haunted by humans.
   Usually, the elf-hounds only got to hunt in these two square miles of cavern, seeking out monsters that had been bred by their masters for sport. But the old blue wyrm was leading the pack out of the familiar tunnels and caves. The dogs could tell. She was leading them upward.
   “Smart old cow,” said one of the dukes. “Should we let her get out of the caves? Shall we follow her? Or shall I order the gates slammed shut? What do we think?”
   “Good day for a hunt,” said a count, squinting after the wyrm through his rune-covered monocle. “Let’s go above-ground. Hunt her up there. It’ll be good for the elf-hounds to have a change of scene. We have the wizards with us. They can hide us from the humans.”
   And so, with great horns blaring behind them, the pack tumbled up the passage that led out of the petrified forest, out of the caverns, and into the bright sunlight of the forest aboveground.
   The old wyrm flung herself along, delighted. She had saved her children. And she herself might escape into this new, bright world. She just had to lead the dogs a little farther. Then she’d give them the slip.
   Outside, it was spring, and the woods were just starting to turn green. The sky was a brilliant blue, and the sun picked out the red riding jackets of the knights and lords and ladies and the gems on their swords and tridents.
   Their wizards rode to either side of the Hunt, cranking magical machines that sputtered out smoke. The People Under the Mountain only lived half in the world of humans, as if they had stepped with one leg into another time or an unseen place. This smoke would make them completely invisible if they stumbled across any humans lost in the woods.
   The dog pack was wild with excitement. They rarely got to visit the world outside the palaces and parks in the caverns under the mountain. Some of them were afraid of the light. Some of them were worried that there were no walls of rock to protect them. They just bounded forward and tried to focus on the retreating wyrm.
   But the young dog with the sharp eyes was fascinated by everything she saw and wanted to see more. She was trained to explore forests and learn their secret ways. She wanted to investigate this sparkling woodland that lay on the top side of the mountain, where she saw colors she had never seen before.
   Greykin, the young dog’s uncle, was close on the wyrm’s tail. He was a prize elf-hound, a leader of the pack. The wyrm reared up and slashed at him. He ducked back.
   The dogs were all around the wyrm then. They did not know that she was trying to protect her young. They only knew that they had been trained to kill beasts like her for the amusement of their masters. They barked furiously.
   Except the young and elegant elf-hound, who had spotted something she had never seen before. It was the back of a gas station. It was made of cement blocks. The woods went right up to it.
   Her uncle Greykin caught her eye. What was she doing? She should start barking, screaming—she should prepare to leap and tear at the scaly monster.
   The wyrm was cornered. Behind her was a road. A highway. Humans drove past in cars, unaware that a few inches from their windows, a great and bloody battle was about to begin.
   The dogs closed in. It looked like several of them were about to die in the fight. The People Under the Mountain did not care. They had plenty of dogs.
   Growling, the pack closed in, step by step. The wyrm swung her front claws. She snapped at them.
   The dogs’ muscles twitched. They were ready to leap.
   The huntsman blew the horn—the signal for the kill.
   And the wyrm threw herself backward and hurtled across the road, swaying her long blue body to eel between speeding cars.
   The dogs just stood there, astonished, their mouths open. A few still remembered to bark.
   They saw the wyrm jump up on top of a van with a loud thump. Then they saw her leap off the other side, into the safety of the woods there.
   The van swerved: the driver must have heard the thump and maybe even caught a glimpse, out of the corner of their eye, of flashing blue scales. There was a lot of honking.
   The dukes and duchesses and knights and ladies all were angry. They had wanted to see a spectacular fight. Now the wyrm had escaped, and the dogs couldn’t reach her over the tide of humans in their vehicles.
   The hunt was over. The duke made a sign to the huntsman, who blew a retreat on his horn. The People Under the Mountain turned their horses around slowly and headed back toward the entrance to the cave, muttering angrily.
   The dogs still barked at the wyrm across the busy highway. A Chihuahua in a truck barked back, furious. But no one else could hear them.
   The hunting horns blew again. From the highway, the car horns honked. The dogs knew it was time to go home. One by one, they turned tail and trotted toward their masters.
   The mystical fog drifted through the trees, growing fainter. Soon, the spring breeze blew it away completely. It was as if the hunt had never happened.US

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