Elf Dog and Owl Head
T.M. Anderson, illustrated by Junyi Wu
Walker Books

This weird magical novel is set during a covid lockdown. Clay O’Brian is tired of the virus that has forced him to stay home away from his friends. All he has to play with is a frisbee but nonetheless he enjoys the time he spends in the forest exploring, it’s far better than being cooped up indoors with his siblings. As he goes to retrieve his frisbee a dog suddenly bursts out of the bushes, a strange-looking dog with long ears, red inside – an elf-hound, Clay calls her. The creature – Clay thinks she’s saved him from a bear – follows him home and decides to stay.

Next day out walking with the dog, Clay overhears that her collar has a name, Elphinore, and that the two men speaking to one another think she’s a royal hunting dog belonging to the People Under the Mountain.

Time passes, the school term ends and Clay has even more time to spend with Elphinore, more time rambling in the forest. Allowed to lead the way, she takes Clay ‘on one of the paths that led through crooked elfin ways up the flank of the mountain.’ It’s thus that he meets the owl-head people, in particular an Owl Boy, Amos from a village full of such people.

One afternoon a while later after a strange incident with a shaker that Clay has acquired, his sisters decide to follow him and find out from where he got it. They creep after their brother and the dog, steered by the latter, so they stay on the right path. Along that same path, DiRossi (Clay’s angsty elder sister) also forms a strange friendship with a miserable giant Vud, that her brother accidentally woke from a deep sleep. Somehow her mood seems to improve as this happens. Clay meanwhile is having to spend time helping his Dad.

Come New Year’s Eve, the absorbing tale builds to a dramatic climax with an event – ‘a party between the worlds’ – on the slopes of Mount Norumbega, after which comes a final resolution with Clay having to decide where he, Amos and Elphinore really belong.

A brilliantly clever amalgam of fantasy and the everyday world, equally brilliantly illustrated with Junyi Wu’s black and white pencil art. A book that will leave readers with a feeling of wonderment.