Owl in Love -- Patrice Kindl

I re-read Owl in Love this weekend because I'm using it for my middle school reading group at the library:

I am in love with Mr. Lindstrom, my science teacher.  I found out where he lives and every night I perch on a tree branch outside his bedroom window and watch him sleep.  He sleeps in his underwear: Fruit of the Loom, size 34.

Owl Tycho is a wereowl:

I am Owl.  It is my name as well as my nature.  There are birds of prey in my family going back hundreds of years, one every two or three generations.  Others of my family shift to dog- or cat-kind, a few to hoofed or finned beasts.

Let me be clear.  I would not wish you to misunderstand: by night I seek my living in owl shape, among the fields and woods surrounding my home.  By day I am an ordinary girl (more or less) attending the local high school.  I am no vampire in a fairy tale, to be ruled by the sun or moon; I can shift to either shape at any time of night or day.

It's a perfect, perfect book.  That's the only way that I can really describe it.  Owl's voice is... well, perfect.  She sounds almost alien at times--because, to us, she is.  Well, half of her is.  But she's funny, too:

I had bitten him of the hand to stop the monotonous falsetto.  He did sound crazy when he talked like that.  The quotation was from Macbeth, reading material far too gloomy for a sensitive boy with a mind in delicate balance.  If he must read Shakespeare, surely the comedies would be a better choice.

Well.  Inadvertently funny, at any rate.

Yep.  Can't recommend it highly enough.  To read it is to love it.  To adore it, even.  It's a very special book. 

(Actually, I've enjoyed all of Patrice Kindl's books.  But especially Owl).