Marshmallow reviews To Night Owl From Dogfish by Holly Goldberg Sloan and Meg Wolitzer

Marshmallow has begun to read To Night Owl From Dogfish a few weeks ago and finally today she is ready to share her thoughts about it with the readers of the Book Bunnies blog. Sprinkles is taking notes and asking followup questions.

Sprinkles: Can you tell us a bit about this book Marshmallow?

Marshmallow: Sure, let me give you a brief summary first.

One day, Avery Allenberry Bloom gets an email from a girl named Bett Garcia Devlin. The email says that she has a gay dad just like Avery and that their fathers are now in love.

Avery does not believe Bett at first and thinks that she is lying. Then Bett says that they are both supposed to be going to a sleepover camp called CIGI. And while they are at the camp, the fathers will be in China. Avery knows that she is going to that camp, and so she starts to believe Bett.

The girls are both alarmed because they do not want to one day be sisters. But at camp they meet face to face for the first time and they start to become friends and they actually start wanting their parents to get married. But then the two fathers break up and things get messy.

S: This sounds a lot like The Parent Trap, an old movie by Hayley Mills. You probably have not seen that movie, but in that movie too, there are two girls who want to get their parents together. Actually it turns out that the two girls are actually twins and the parents are both their parents. Bett and Avery aren’t twins though, of course, right?

M: No they’re not.

S: So what else happens in the book? Are the girls at the camp for the rest of the book?

M: No. Actually they get kicked out of the camp, and they go stay with Avery’s biological mom. Then Avery’s father gets mad at the mother and then decides to come back from China early.

S: Is that when the two fathers break up?

M: Yes. And the rest of the book is more or less all about the girls trying to set things right.

S: That sounds interesting.

M: They do go to a lot of other places in the book.

S: The whole book seems like it is a collection of letters and emails, right? There seem to be no standard narrative segments.

M: Yes, that’s true. It is an interesting feature of the book. The whole story is written as a series of letters, emails, and text messages.

S: That sounds unusual, right? Those kinds of novels are called epistolary. How did it work for you?

M: It was very interesting to read a book written like this.

S: Did it ever get confusing? Were you always aware of who was writing?

M: Yes because on the top corner of each letter, there was the sender and recipient information, and the subject line, like in an email.

S: That is neat! So who is the Night Owl and who is Dogfish?

M: Night Owl is Avery and Dogfish is Bett.

S: Why?

M: In one text, Bett asks Avery what animal she would be if she were an animal. Avery says she’d be a night owl because she reads a lot at night. And Bett responds that she would be Dogfish, because she loves swimming and she loves her dog.

S: So would you recommend this book to other bunnies?

M: Yes, this is a very good read. This would be a good book for people who like reading about friendship. An interesting thread in the book is about how the two girls don’t want their fathers to be a couple at first but eventually they start enjoying each other’s company and their opinions change.

S: This looks to me like a good place to wrap up this review. Is there anything you want to say to finish things off Marshmallow?

M: Yes! Happy reading! And stay tuned for more book bunnies adventures!