The Owly Trilogy: A Collection of Adventure Stories for Children

The Owly Trilogy by Orla Kelly is a collection of adventure stories for children. The stories take place in a magic forest and focus on a young owl and his animal friends as they learn to recognize their own strengths and to work together as a team. Together they defeat enemies and take care of their forest home. The author clearly intended these stories to teach children lessons about working together, overcoming challenges, believing in themselves and taking care of the environment.
The first adventure in the book succeeds somewhat in imparting these lessons through the story. Unfortunately, the edition I read was so badly edited that it was very distracting and very difficult to read. There were some awkward sentences: “Instead show more there was the sound of birds singing, the happy calling of all the animals, instead of silence or arguing where no one talked to each other or where there was arguing amongst the animals”. Words were frequently misused: for example badgers “burying” holes rather than digging or burrowing. In some passages ideas were added as a seeming afterthought which would have made more sense integrated into an earlier paragraph. It made for a confusing and convoluted read at times.
The problems with the first adventure could be solved with a good copy editor. The later adventures suffer from a more serious problem. The lessons the author was hoping to teach in these stories are undermined by the plot strategies she used. Rather than solving their problems by their own determination and teamwork, the animals are mostly rescued by the magical elements in the forest. In one story they spend most of the time in hiding. In one of the stories a character feels badly about herself because of her appearance. Owly tries to get her to recognize her own value and the contributions she has made to the forest community. This is a good thing. However, in the end she is made magically “pretty” and becomes happy. This is not a good lesson to teach young girls.
There was the potential of some good stories here, but I can’t recommend this book in the form I was given. show less

Being a children's book this is quite wordy than the average young read.
Although the concept of each story seemed magical, upon reading it, it fell a bit flat. It may be due to the fact that the narrative is in a pretty direct manner, rather than in a tone to get a feel for the situation.
I also believe a few images or illustrations would not have gone astray
I do love and enjoy reading children's books but somehow The Owly Trilogy did not captivate me as much as it should have.
Having said this, I still did highly appreciate each story and the morals behind it and there was just enough enchantment for me to finish the book.

My son is only 5, so this was a little bit advanced for him. I expect we'll enjoy it more in years to come - the stories seem to be engaging.

The Owly Trilogy: A Collection of Adventure Stories for Children
by Orla Kelly

The book has a lovely cover artwork of forest animals that are reminiscent of the Jungle Book animals.
The main character in the book is a wise young bird, Owly, a fairly wise owl, who likes to help other animals. He also believes in team work and roping in all the animals of the forest to help someone in need and teaches them to care for each other and protect each other - admirable qualities for young readers.
The animals live in a magical forest which has a very wise, kind and helpful Magic Tree and the Spirit of the Forest, who makes all things bright and beautiful. But the Spirt and the tree did not reveal themselves to the animals until the animals went in show more search for them.
Basically the plot of the trilogy, as summarised at the beginning of Book II, is that all the animals had lived in a dark forest for quite some time without anything bright or beautiful, so the Spirit of the Forest was absent from their lives. All the animals stayed in their specific groups without mixing or talking to other animals.
But one day when Lizzy lizard was in danger of being eaten by Victor Vulture, Owly managed to get all the animals together and asked for their help. This was the start of team work in the forest. It was a magical day when they all learned to make friends with each other and when they all started working together and went on amazing adventures, such as going to Victor Vulture's secret place with a beautiful cave and lake.
Then in order to attract the Spirit of the Forest into their lives they all went in search of bright things and made a huge collection of bright things, The Spirit of the forest then showed herself to the animals in colourful patterns, like rainbows, and helped them in their tasks. Her magnificent rainbows enabled the animals to slide down the rainbows as a short cut to where they wanted to go.
The reader does not really get to know any of the other animals though as Owly is the main character and the story is really all about him. There are some animals that show their characters, like Victor, who was fierce, vicious and nasty in the beginning, before he became a nicer bird when the animals were kind to him.
Then the badgers also showed the nails and teeth and aggressive nature, while Cloud, the butterfly, showed she was not satisfied with the way she was made and wanted to be rainbow coloured. Happily for her the Spirit of the forest granted her wish.
The book shows promise as a children's story but there is a lot of waffle such as the chapter on Owly's adventure with Cloud. There is too much unnecessary detail prevalent in several chapters and young children could get bored in places. The best chapter is the first - the magical day, which is most enjoyable.

- Review by Bev Mortimer show less

While the concept and characters of this book have much potential, the execution of the text does not live up to this promise. With a better editor this work could be easily improved and live up to this potential.

This book was lovely and my children enjoyed it very much. I love that I can read a little at a time from this book. I will check out more from this author.