The Owen Skye trilogy
"For days and weeks he
imagined an airplane
suddenly falling out of
the sky, rushing at a
thousand miles an hour
straight into the windows
of the classroom. While all
the other kids ran for the door
he’d flash across and tackle
Sylvia under a desk so
that the plane crash would
just miss the both of them.
Everybody else would be
killed, so she’d have to
marry him.”
"Alan Cumyn, who has written so many celebrated adult novels... is fast becoming one of
today's leading Canadian writers for children. His Owen Skye books can stand beside the works of
such established writers as Kit Pearson, Tim Wynne-Jones, Robert Munsch and Dennis Lee.”
Aida Hudson, The Ottawa Citizen
"Cumyn has a sense of humour that's shot through with wonder, a knack for showing a boy's
tender side without ever sounding soppy. Indeed, After Sylvia is full of hilarious moments--
Owen hanging off a drainpipe in a fit of impetuosity; Owen trying to sell tractor calendars from
door to door; the crystal radio suddenly issuing bird calls when the boys are supposed to be
asleep. At the same time, it's poignant and true: Cumyn evokes family fights, boring winter
dinners... and moments of excruciating embarrassment with uncanny precision. ('Her voice
seemed very bright,' Cumyn writes of Owen's mother at the moment her brother spills the
beans about Owen's secret love, 'like that of a doctor who has extracted a heart from a chest and is
watching it beat on the table.') It's rare to get a novel of such boy appeal that's also funny, wise
and literary, simultaneously slapstick and deeply perceptive."
Deirdre Baker, The Toronto Star
Hackmatack Children’s
Choice Award 2004
Mr. Christie’s Book
Award 2002
finalist Governor
General's Award
2002
Finalist TD Award
for Children’s
Literature 2005
Finalist Canadian
Library Association
Book of the Year
for Children 2005
Silver Birch Express
Award 2009
finalist Ottawa Book
Award 2009