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Returnable | Yes |
---|---|
Resolutions | Eligible for refund or replacement |
Return Window | 30 days from delivery |
Refund Timelines | Typically, an advance refund will be issued within 24 hours of a drop-off or pick-up. For returns that require physical verification, refund issuance may take up to 30 days after drop-off or pick up. Where an advance refund is issued, we will re-charge your payment method if we do not receive the correct item in original condition. See details here. |
Late fee | A late fee of 20% of the item price will apply if you complete the drop off or pick up after the ‘Return By Date’. |
Restocking fee | A restocking fee may apply if the item is not returned in original condition and original packaging, or is damaged or missing parts for reasons not due to Amazon or seller error. See details here. |
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Elf Dog and Owl Head Hardcover – April 11, 2023
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"A hilarious, heartfelt triumph."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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.
- Reading age8 - 12 years
- Print length240 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Grade level3 - 7
- Lexile measure660L
- Dimensions6.37 x 0.77 x 8.37 inches
- PublisherCandlewick
- Publication dateApril 11, 2023
- ISBN-10153622281X
- ISBN-13978-1536222814
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From the Publisher
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Feed | Elf Dog and Owl Head | Landscape with Invisible Hand | The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge | |
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Read more from the award-winning author M. T. Anderson! | A National Book Award finalist! Titus and his friends’ spring break is cut short when a hacker messes with their feeds, sending them to a hospital. There, Titus meets Violet, a girl who’s decided to fight the feed that’s implanted their heads. | A Newbery Honor Book! After a global plague brings Clay’s summer to a halt, he’s only too happy to retreat to the woods. There, he finds mysterious dog Elphinore among the trees and they go on an adventure that will change their lives forever. | A major motion picture! After aliens called the vuvv take over Earth, Adam’s parents lose their jobs. Now that they have no money for food, clean water, or the vuvv’s miraculous medicine, Adam has to get creative to survive. How far will he go? | A National Book Award finalist! Uptight elfin historian Brangwain Spurge is on a mission to spy on the goblin kingdom, but a series of extraordinary misunderstandings throws him and his host Werfel into the middle of an international crisis! |
Editorial Reviews
Review
—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 Central
About the Author
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.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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.
Product details
- Publisher : Candlewick; Signed edition (April 11, 2023)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 240 pages
- ISBN-10 : 153622281X
- ISBN-13 : 978-1536222814
- Reading age : 8 - 12 years
- Lexile measure : 660L
- Grade level : 3 - 7
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.37 x 0.77 x 8.37 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #31,258 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #308 in Children's Dog Books (Books)
- #1,126 in Children's Fantasy & Magic Books
- #1,444 in Children's Action & Adventure Books (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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I'm 65 and I loved it ! Passing it on to the gr
andkids.
Nice story to get out of everyday life and into unknown worlds.
Middle child, Clay, just wants something to happen, anything to happen, to break up the daily monotony he endures. His only escape is to visit the woods surrounding his home every day.
On one of these escapes, Clay finds an unusual dog and brings it back home with him. This dog is an elf hound, and in a nod to Narnia, she can travel between worlds.
Lead by the elf hound, named Elphinore, Clay travels paths in the woods to numerous other worlds that all hold fantastical creatures and magical secrets. During his adventures, he befriends an owl-headed boy, visits millennia old giants, and sneaks into the home of the cruel People Under the Mountain.
“Elf Dog and Owl Head” takes its reader on a wild ride, off to discover the delights and terrors of these fantastical worlds. A must read for fantasy lovers.
Read-alikes: The Adventurers’ Guild, The Demon Sword Asperides, Lark and the Wild Hunt
2025 Oklahoma Sequoyah Award Winner: Children's Division
Reviewed in the United States on February 26, 2024
Middle child, Clay, just wants something to happen, anything to happen, to break up the daily monotony he endures. His only escape is to visit the woods surrounding his home every day.
On one of these escapes, Clay finds an unusual dog and brings it back home with him. This dog is an elf hound, and in a nod to Narnia, she can travel between worlds.
Lead by the elf hound, named Elphinore, Clay travels paths in the woods to numerous other worlds that all hold fantastical creatures and magical secrets. During his adventures, he befriends an owl-headed boy, visits millennia old giants, and sneaks into the home of the cruel People Under the Mountain.
“Elf Dog and Owl Head” takes its reader on a wild ride, off to discover the delights and terrors of these fantastical worlds. A must read for fantasy lovers.
Read-alikes: The Adventurers’ Guild, The Demon Sword Asperides, Lark and the Wild Hunt
2025 Oklahoma Sequoyah Award Winner: Children's Division