Photo by Bonus Action
When I first picked up Encounter at Owl Rock by Rucker Moses, I was immediately intrigued by the cover. The flying skateboards? The alien in a hoodie? The creepy owl statue in the background? The sunglass-wearing motorcycle riders? Sign me up!
Sci-fi is not typically a genre that I gravitate towards, but something about this one drew me in. In middle school, I was a sucker for the Alex Rider books by Anthony Horowitz and this immediately gave me a similar vibe but for a modern audience with a true sci-fi twist.
Throw in pop culture references, a well-done dual narration between the two main characters – identical twin brothers, down-to-earth Cypress and Oakley, who “is always watching the skies,”- and this was just the thing to cure a reading slump.
Key Details
- Encounter at Owl Rock
- Author: Rucker Moses
- Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House
- Age Range: 10-12 Years
- Price: $18.99 USD / $24.99 CAN
- Where to Buy: Barnes & Noble | Amazon
- Review Copy Provided: Yes
Unique Cast of Characters Leaves Readers Craving More
The story started a little vloggy for my personal tastes – it felt a bit like watching a YouTuber from 2018, but once the meat of the story began, I was hooked.
The story was well-paced, the narrator switch-ups kept you turning the page to see what was happening with either brother (even when they were in the same place), and well-written, diverse characters really drove this novel from start to finish. I was invested.
In addition, this book leaned heavily into the power of community, which feels like a refreshing change of pace from a lot of children’s media these days. With the twins being orphans and Jaz having lost her mother, I was nervous that it was going to lean into the Lemony Snicket-type of content where nothing seems to go right and the kids would be reliant on their own wits without anyone to truly trust, but the exact opposite happened.
When Oakley first went missing, Jaz and Cy didn’t hesitate to ask for help from Junior Jr., seeing Junior’s Corner Store with “the half-lit sign like a refuge”. Junior Jr. listened to them, protected them, and then instructed the kids to reach out to their guardians, who then followed through as well. The kids knew they had a community to turn to and to trust when things went sideways. They knew they could trust the adults to care about their well-being.
While Oak, Cy, and Jaz are all capable, competent children (and, ultimately, they do save the day with their own skills, smarts, and creativity), the impact and power of their community and the people around them do matter. They know who they can trust when they need help. They listen to advice from the elders around them. They lean into one another and play to each other’s strengths, rather than each of them thinking they must be the hero alone.
I wanted to know more about DJ Halftime, Jaz, and Junior Jr. I wanted to see how Cy and Oak were going to save the day. I wanted to learn more about their family – glimpses of which we saw in the remembered lessons from their grandparents in times of crisis. I wanted to know everything about everyone in South Bank, which is just good writing.
Can A Book Be Too Specific?
Throughout the book, some of the references felt almost too specific to be generally understandable by a wide audience. This might be my Mountain West, 90’s kid, pre-internet upbringing, but I had no idea what a Jesus piece was, have no memory of listening to “Elevators” by Outkast before reading this book (because, yes, I did turn it on when, spoilers, it became a major plot point), and only had the vaguest of understanding of who Silver Surfer is.
However, for a middle-schooler in the deep South, none of what threw me off (and led me to Google) is going to be a problem. Every page of this book felt like talking to your neighbor and getting the details from them on what happened at the local park.
For the kids raised on internet memes, YouTube, and pop culture references galore, this book is going to be a hit no matter where they are from. It may be familiar to some, or feel like a different world to others, but at its core, the story of community and friendship comes through.
For those of us who do not fit the target demographic, it is still worth a read. The world needs more stories about people from all backgrounds. We all should be reading and learning from people and authors who come from a different place than we do.
We can all benefit from the empathetic exercise of seeing through someone else’s eyes and learning from their experiences. As Lil Rune tells Oakley, “One of a kind. You are one of a kind, Oakley Young.” Only by learning from one another, each of us unique, can we start to understand and build community together. Aren’t we all “just looking to be understood” and “learning what it means to have a friend?”
Final rating: 8.5/10
Rucker Moses did a spectacular job of creating a world where you’re rooting for the kids, without making every adult surrounding them incompetent. It channels the joys of adventuring with friends in childhood from the first page to the very last, with little words of wisdom sprinkled throughout the text.
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