Phares O’Daffer

Sometimes when something special is lost for a while, it becomes more precious. So it was with Hoot Owl, my favorite childhood book.

I told a group of friends recently about Hoot Owl (not recalling the author’s name), and none of them had ever heard of it. In fact my friend, who owns a used bookstore, couldn’t find any trace of it.

Whoa!  How can this be?  In third grade, at one-room Prairie View School outside Weldon, Illinois, I read that book 25 times.  I could probably rewrite the story from memory. Had I not remembered the correct title?

How could a little book about a settler boy who got lost playing in the forest and was adopted by an Indian tribe, just disappear in thin air?

As time elapsed, still no Hoot Owl. My friends gave me that “are you crazy” smile when the topic came up, and I didn’t blame them.

Then one fateful day I read that Hoot Owl, written in 1936 by Mabel Guinnep LaRue, was mystery author Charlotte Hinger’s favorite childhood book. I was sane again!

Then I found a first edition copy of Hoot Owl on ebay for $6,400. Too rich for my blood.

About a year later, a person in Ohio wrote that he would sell his pretty worn first edition for $250 so he could buy his little daughter a special birthday present.

Hoot Owl is on my desk. I don’t care what it’s worth.  I know its value in my heart.