OWL CAPONE

An owl restaurateur gets some unexpected competition from a double-crossing colleague.

Owl Capone—“the nicest owl in the history of owls”—runs Capone’s, a popular vegetarian wrap restaurant in the Windy Forest. For years he has employed a rat named Gus, whom he considers “famiglia”; Owl has also given jobs to members of Gus’ family. (Capisce?) But one day, right across the street, that dirty rat opens Gus’s Joint, where he has the nerve to serve a special sauce made with Owl’s family recipe. “I’ve been planning this for months, Owl,” admits Gus. “You were just too nice to see it. Kindness has made you weak.” Ewers, making her literary debut here, peppers the story with allusions to The Godfather, which readers will gobble up…presuming they’re adults, the age group for which this book seems to have been written. Are young children (versus, say, their parents) really concerned that kindness can be misconstrued as weakness? What kid knows the meaning of watering hole, a term used in the story but that somehow didn’t make it into the book’s glossary, which includes such phrases as “stabbed in the back” and “an offer he couldn’t refuse”? The resolution to Owl’s crisis is unremarkable, but Sayegh’s digital collage art, which features an all-animal cast dressed like players in a golden-age gangster movie, sure is swell.

Anyone familiar with gangster tropes should find this book terrific fun. As for young readers? Fuhgeddaboudit.