Guardians of Ga'Hoole 05 - The Shattering

to a place where the trees thinned out and Gylfie spotted something ahead that intrigued her. “Let’s land in that next tree,” she whispered to Otulissa.
    The two young owls perched on a slender branch. “Look over there,” Gylfie whispered. Otulissa blinked. Through the fir trees were the whitest birch trees either one of them had ever seen. The trees grew in a circle, a perfect circle. And then, if one peered really hard, as Gylfie was now doing, there was something else.
    “That’s an owl,” Gylfie whispered to Otulissa.
    “Where? I don’t see an owl.”
    “Over there, a few inches in front of that trunk.” Gylfie pointed with one talon to indicate the tree she was looking at.
    “I don’t see—” Otulissa started to say, but then interrupted herself. “Walt. Great Glaux, it’s a Snowy Owl.”
    And there was not just one Snowy but a half dozen standing sentry, their white plumage with the occasional dark spots blending in perfectly with the white-barked trees behind them. Gylfie and Otulissa had arrived at the retreat of the Glauxian Brothers.

About the Author
    Kathryn Lasky has had a long fascination with owls. Several years ago, she began doing extensive research about these birds and their behaviors. She thought that she would someday write a nonfiction book about owls illustrated with photographs by her husband, Christopher Knight. She realized, though, that this would indeed be difficult since owls are shy, nocturnal creatures. So she decided to write a fantasy about a world of owls. Even though it is an imaginary world in which owls can speak, think, and dream, she wanted to include as much of their natural history as she could.
    Kathryn Lasky has written many books, both fiction and nonfiction, including Sugaring Time , for which she won a Newbery Honor. Among her fiction books are The Night Journey , a winner of the National Jewish Book Award, and Beyond the Burning Time , an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, as well as the Daughters of the Sea and Wolves of the Beyond series. She has also received the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award and the Washington Post Children’s Book Guild Award for her contribution to nonfiction.
    Lasky and her husband live in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Guardians of Ga’Hoole
    Book One: The Capture
    Book Two: The Journey
    Book Three: The Rescue
    Book Four: The Siege
    Book Five: The Shattering
    Book Six: The Burning
    Book Seven: The Hatchling
    Book Eight: The Outcast
    Book Nine: The First Collier
    Book Ten: The Coming of Hoole
    Book Eleven: To Be a King
    Book Twelve: The Golden Tree
    Book Thirteen: The River of Wind
    Book Fourteen: Exile
    Book Fifteen: The War of the Ember
A Guide Book to the Great Tree
Lost Tales of Ga’Hoole

Copyright
    No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
    Text copyright © 2004 by Kathryn Lasky.
    All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
    First Printing, August 2004
    All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
    eISBN 978-0-545-28336-6
    Cover art by Richard Cowdrey
Cover design by Steve Scott