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Hi! \u00a0<\/span>Protagonist: A young (teenage?) male otter with a snakeskin eyepatch, who is high up in the otter tribe\u2014the chief\u2019s son, I think. He\u2019s a quiet loner who doesn\u2019t fit in and no one knows what to do with him. \u00a0<\/span>Thanks for the help! I really appreciate it.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hi! I\u2019ve been searching for this book, on and off, for years\u2026um, decades now. (Wow, that\u2019s just\u2026sad.) Anyway my latest google search lead me to you. I\u2019ve tried to organize this semi-coherently, but I read it as a kid and my facts may be fuzzy. Title\/author\/cover: no idea. Publication: before 1992, likely before \u201990. I\u2019m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,17,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1612"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1612"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1614,"href":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1612\/revisions\/1614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nI\u2019ve been searching for this book, on and off, for years\u2026um, decades now. (Wow, that\u2019s just\u2026sad.) Anyway my latest google search lead me to you. I\u2019ve tried to organize this semi-coherently, but I read it as a kid and my facts may be fuzzy.
\nTitle\/author\/cover: no idea.
\n<\/span>Publication: before 1992, likely before \u201990. I\u2019m guessing sometime in the ’80s.
\nAge: MG (shelved under Juvenile in the public library, where I found it)
\n<\/span>Length: between 150-300 pages.
\nStyle:\u00a0anthropomorphic animals in their communities. No humans. No illustrations that I remember.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>Subplot #1:The community wants the loner to marry this girl otter, but she doesn\u2019t want anything to do with him. She thinks he\u2019s a poser, and wears the eyepatch to be \u201ccool\u201d. Besides, she\u2019s in love with this other guy. She discovers late in the book that no, actually, he wears the eyepatch because he\u2019s missing his eye. They become friends, though at the end the girl marries the other guy. We see the wedding, it\u2019s one of the last scenes in the book.
\nSubplot #2: <\/span>The loner falls in love with a fish! The fish cares about him, but doesn\u2019t love him back. Not the way he loves her. She\u2019s mostly like, \u201cdude, seriously? This is insane. You\u2019re insane. You\u2019re an otter, I\u2019m a fish, end of story.\u201d And it IS the end\u2014the final scene (I think) is her swimming away with her family\/friends to a new river\/ocean\/somewhere. The move has been discussed throughout the story, and the loner knows it\u2019s coming. He sits on the riverbank and watches her swim away.
\n<\/span>Main plot??: A predatory bird (eagle? hawk?) is threatening\u2026something. Either the otter community, the fish, or some other furry\/scaly thing that will die if the bird isn\u2019t stopped. But this is like birdzilla, and nobody goes against it and lives. The loner would know\u2014this same bird killed his mother and sister (I think?) and captured\/tried-to-capture him when he was young. That\u2019s how he lost his eye. So the bird is wrecking\/intends-to-wreck havoc, and the loner tries to gather help to stop it (including the girl otter and her guy), but no one will help. So the loner goes off alone to face the impossible. Once the girl otter realizes this, she runs to help and finds the loner dazed\/unconscious from a fall\u2014with his eyepatch shifted up. That\u2019s how she finds out about his eye. Also something about a nest\u2014the bird\u2019s or some other bird\u2019s\u2026pretty sure the loner fell from the nest or was pushed out and that\u2019s how he passed out\u2026or something? Hmmm. Can\u2019t remember if they kill the bird or not, but there may be a slingshot involved and the day is definitely saved.
\nSo\u2026you can totally see what bits of the story fascinated middle grade me. Hmmm.<\/span>
\n<\/span>Books it\u2019s not:
\n\u2014 Otter & Odder: A Love Story. This PB is the first thing that comes up on google. Definitely not it.
\n<\/span>\u2014 Anything by Brian Jacques. I loved the Redwall books, but this wasn\u2019t one of them. And according to wiki, Jacques didn\u2019t write non-Redwall stuff until waaaaay later, mostly 2001+.<\/span><\/p>\n