By Jane Yolen
A girl finally gets to go owling with her Pa, late, in the cold, and the whole book is the walk.
It is late and it is very cold and the girl has waited a long time for this, because her brothers have all had their turn. She and Pa go out under a full moon with the snow squeaking and the train whistling somewhere far off. Pa stops and calls, a long low hoo, and they wait. Nothing. They walk on into the woods, past shadows she says are the blackest things she knows, and he calls again. Nothing. She doesn't complain, because you don't complain when you go owling, and she has already worked out that this might be the whole night. Then, deep in the trees, something answers. Pa calls back. It comes closer, and closer, and then a great horned owl is on the branch above them in the beam of his flashlight, looking straight at her, and the three of them just stay there. Then it goes. And they walk home.
This is the book that teaches a child that waiting is part of the thing, not the price of the thing. Nothing happens for twenty pages and it is completely absorbing, because the girl wants the owl so much that your child starts wanting it too, and the long silence is what makes the last spread hit. It also does something useful: the girl is out in the dark being brave and nobody ever says the word brave. She just doesn't cry, and she tells you she didn't, and that's the whole characterization.