The Realistic Animal Story
No definition quite encompasses or fits animals like Mutt, the Prince Albert (?) retriever, the hero of Farley Mowat's The Dog Who Wouldn't Be …, written for adults and adopted by children, or Wol and Weeps, the equally surprising owls of Mowat's Owls in the Family …, written for children and adopted by adults. Both books brought joy and exuberance and a sense of fun and mischief for the first time into Canadian children's literature.
Mutt, the dog who wouldn't be, was a dog all right, but he was also sensitive to his appearance and to comments made about him. He early learned to avoid trouble with more combative dogs by balancing on the top of back fences; then he graduated to tree and ladder climbing. He was a traveller, sailing on the Saskatchewan River with Farley's father and on land in the Mowat car, suitably dressed in dark glasses. He became the most noted, but not always the most loved, dog in Saskatoon, maybe because of, maybe in spite of, the competition offered him by Farley's madcap father. Though a supercanine, Mutt was not immortal, and in old age he did not evade the destructiveness of the hit-and-run driver. Death on a back road in eastern Ontario ends his story—the ending does not come as a surprise: it is inevitable. The fast and furious sense of fun has been gradually disappearing and the reality of the ending casts an aura of credibility, even over the bizarre incidents that have gone before.
All the Mowat animals are presented as eccentric individualists, memorable for their refusal to accept the limitations of an animal's life. The truth or untruth of any particular incident is immaterial; disbelief is suspended and the reader does not doubt either the genuineness or the exaggerations of the Mowat way of life. If animals do take on the characteristics of the family with whom they live, then Mutt is completely credible.
Owls in the Family is an extension of one of the episodes in The Dog Who Wouldn't Be. No more readily classifiable than its predecessor, it purports to be a factual account of a family and its peculiar pets. The element of realism does exist—the owls are owls and the boys are boys—and there is a sharp sense of prairie sky and sun and cottonwoods…. Most of all, it is an autobiography, recalling and conveying with humour, sometimes farcical and sometimes wry, a sympathetic but unsentimental feeling for animals and the values the author holds important: generosity, justice, and compassion. And it always rings true, for the boy who recounts the tale is honest and sensitive, and as colloquial as only a boy can be.
Mr Mowat is a natural writer for children. He writes from his own experience, both childhood and adult. With his direct, simple, and lively style he can reveal aspects of life that are necessary in good children's literature if it is to have any enduring value. Qualities such as cruelty, irony, satire—gentled of course—give life and depth to children's literature and they are present in all Mowat's animal stories. They are implied in the style and confronted squarely in the realistic details. (pp. 120-22)
Sheila Egoff, "The Realistic Animal Story," in her The Republic of Childhood: A Critical Guide to Canadian Children's Literature in English (© Oxford University Press, Canadian Branch, 1975; reprinted by permission), Oxford University Press, Canadian Branch, 1975, pp. 105-26.∗
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