A Time to Be Brave

such cute stuff. I love it and my daughter loves it. And I know great grandparents that love Owly. Wonderful work Andy...

What a great tale of friendship! I loved that this graphic novel is for the younger set. It will encourage new readers to work out the plot and moral of the story and Andy Runton does a great job of getting the story across through such expressive characters and symbols! Well done.

Owly is a cute puffball of a bird and is almost all eyes. The other creatures that populate the stories, including a worm, smaller birds and lightning bugs, are also cute and expressive. There is nothing to actually read in these books other than a few sentences from the books Owly reads. Dialogue takes place through pictographs symbolizing concepts like home and ideas. It is great to take my geeklet through the process of understanding the images as we turn the pages. I received a copy of the fourth book, A Time to be Brave, from the publisher. My five year old has quickly become a big fan of these graphic novels. I like them just as much as he does. The stories tell the power of friendship, trying your hardest and caring for others. All great traits that I try to teach my kids. In the Fourth Book, A Time to be Brave, Wormy is frightened by a bedtime story about dragons. They encounter a timid opossum. When Owly tries to help, the opossum bares his teeth trying to ward off what he perceives as a predator. Owly takes on a parental role by comforting Wormy and telling him that there are no such things as dragons, reassuring the other animals that an injured tree can be nursed back to health, and going out into the night to investigate strange sounds. For being wordless, the pages are full of expression. Reading them demands attention, first to figure out what's being shown and then to enjoy all the details. If you are looking for something new to read to your geeklets, pick up one of the Owly books.

I just got done reading it, and once again I am very pleased with another Owly edition. I very much appreciate this particular art form ("wordless" graphic novel), and it is a relatively quick read (took me approx. 30 minutes). This book (and others in the Owly series) can appear to be more suited toward a younger crowd, but as an adult I find it to be a breath of fresh air that makes me think about my own behaviors and attitudes toward relationships. Major theme of this book: Overcoming fears (rooted in ignorance in this case) can lead to helping others and establishing new friendships.

It's very hard not to adore Owly. The drawings, charmingly rendered in black and white, effectively communicate entire stories with very few to no words. They're great for young kids who still don't know how to read that well, but all ages can appreciate the genuine heart-felt nature of the simple stories and the delicate ways in which they are told. The remarkable thing here is that Owly, in volume 4, shows no signs of slowing down or losing ideas. Each book teaches a new idea or lesson. A Time to Be Brave is about being brave when it's the, well, right time. It's wonderful, children will love it, and adults will treasure it.