Plop is a baby owl. Perfect in every way - except for one. He's afraid of the dark! But he soon discovers, through a variety of new friends, that dark can be fun and exciting and magical! This is a story for very young readers.
Plop, the Baby Barn Owl, is like every Barn Owl there ever was, except for one thing - he is afraid of the dark. Dark is nasty he says and so he won't go hunting with his parents. Mrs Barn Owl sends him down from his nest-hole to ask about the dark and he meets a little boy waiting for the fireworks to begin, an old lady, a scout out camping, a girl who tells him about Father Christmas, a man with a telescope and a black cat who takes him exploring. He realizes that through these encounters that dark is super after all.
Filled with gentle humour and comfort, Jill Tomlinson's animal stories have been enjoyed by children who want to snuggle down with a good read for decades. This edition of The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark is beautifully illustrated by Paul Howard.
Jill Tomlinson never intended to be a writer. She trained as an opera singer, and then decided to have a family whilst her voice matured. But illness intervened, and she had to find another outlet for her energies. She started on a journalism course, and by the third lesson decided she wanted to write for children. So she did!
It did not come easily. Her first story, The Bus who went to Church, was rejected by sixteen publishers before it was accepted for a picture book. Several other picture books followed until she felt a need to stretch herself further. She wrote five short stories about a hen wanting to visit an aunt and her chicks, and Methuen thought that if she wrote another five stories on the same theme the book would fit well into their new ‘Read Aloud’ series.
