56 pages • 1 hour read
Meg Wolitzer, Holly Goldberg SloanTo Night Owl From Dogfish
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Pages 50-100Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Pages 50-100 Summary
The email exchange between Avery and Bett continues. Avery has already written two more stories, along with 18 poems. She shares a haiku she wrote, which is about their fathers abandoning them to go on a vacation together.
Sam emails Avery to say he’s excited about his adventure with Marlow and to ask what Avery thinks about Bett.
Bett replies to Avery. She’s alone in the office, being punished because she jumped off the zipline into the lake. While waiting for the camp director, Daniel Birnbaum, to come speak to her, Bett wonders if she will be sent home. This would be a problem, since Marlow is still in China. Also, Bett read Marlow’s email and discovered that he and Sam have gotten into two motorcycle crashes and are both minorly injured. Sam also had to take Marlow to the hospital for a peanut allergy incident.
Daniel Birnbaum emails Marlow explaining that Bett broke the rules but is unharmed. Bett is well-liked and amenable, but not great with authority. Daniel questions whether she was trying to harm herself by jumping in the lake. She has been removed from zipline class as well as Campcrafts, which involves hatchets.
Worried about “copycat crimes,” CIGI shuts the zipline down. Some campers find Bett impressive, but others start to avoid her. Avery tells Bett “we’re not talking to each other and we’re still not friends, but I’m on your side” (60). She even asked the counselor, Rachel, if she could visit Bett in the infirmary. Her request was denied, but she saved her cheesecake from dinner and fed it to the pigs. When Bett thanks Avery for taking care of the pigs, she signs “Xo” before her name for the first time. The camp psychiatrist concludes that Bett shows no signs of wanting to harm herself or others.
Marlow is unphased by the zipline incident but asks Bett (via email) to behave so she doesn’t get kicked out of camp. He asks if she is getting along with Avery and Bett confirms that she is.
Over email, Bett and Avery decide to meet in real life at a birdwatching event. They climb on the roof of a barn and see an owl, having a great time.
Sam and Marlow’s trip becomes more stressful. Sam feels they should have done more research beforehand, but Marlow likes to improvise. It turns out motorcycles are illegal in many Chinese cities, so they had to hire guides to take them through certain areas.
“Family Day” is coming up at camp, but the girls’ fathers are still in China. Bett asks if Avery knows who her biological mother is. Avery reveals that her mother is Kristina Allenberry, a playwright and a friend of Sam’s from college. Avery’s middle initial stands for “Allenberry,” but she never writes it unless it’s required. Bett and Marlow have seen two of Kristina’s plays, so Bett is very excited by the revelation. Avery hasn’t seen Kristina in eight years and doesn’t know her very well: Kristina and Sam fought about Avery and no longer get along. However, Avery has also seen Kristina’s plays, unbeknownst to Sam (or Kristina).
Bett emails Kristina, introducing herself as a friend and possible future sister of Avery’s. She found Kristina’s email address online and noticed she is currently at a theater festival in Seelocken, Michigan, less than two hours away from CIGI. Since Kristina is Avery’s mother, Bett and Kristina will now be family too. She invites Kristina to Family Day, implying that Avery knows about the invitation when she in fact doesn’t.
Kristina’s intern, Ben, replies to Bett, explaining that Kristina is busy with rehearsals. She wants to attend Family Day, but Ben will have to bring her because Kristina doesn’t drive. Bett is thrilled that Kristina is coming, and she tells Director Daniel, who is a fan of Kristina’s. She does not tell Avery, planning to surprise her.
Normally, the campers whose families don’t come to Family Day go to a nearby water park. Avery believes Bett convinced Director Daniel to let her and Bett stay behind because of Avery’s fear of drowning. Avery says she’s glad she and Bett spend time together now, though that still doesn’t mean they’re friends or sisters. She also uses “Xo” before signing off. The girls begin to use “Night Owl” (Avery) and “Dogfish” (Bett) as code names for each other.
Gaga divulges to Bett that Marlow was planning to propose to Sam on the trip to China. Meanwhile, the fathers’ passports were stolen or lost. Also, one of their motorcycles broke down, so they are now sharing one, and Sam’s phone got damaged. Sam is more upset than Marlow.
When Kristina and Ben arrive at CIGI, Bett greets them and says Avery doesn’t know they’re coming, which makes Kristina nervous. When Avery sees Kristina, Kristina wants to hug her daughter but is too scared. Avery is furious because she feels like Bett violated her privacy and stepped out of place by inviting Kristina. However, when Bett says, “Come on–aren’t you glad to see her? I mean, she’s your MOM!” (97), Avery starts to cry, Kristina hugs her, and Bett joins in.
Bett, Avery, and Kristina have a wonderful time during Family Day. At the end of the day, Kristina discovers that Ben has already left, leaving her with no way to return to Seelocken that night. Kristina takes this as a sign that she should spend more time with her daughter. She finds both girls and convinces them to sneak away with her to the other side of the lake instead of going to sleep in their cabins. They stay up most of the night talking and bonding before finally falling asleep.
The counselors realize the girls are missing around 3:00 o’clock in the morning and panic. The girls and Kristina don’t hear them calling because they’re asleep. In the morning, Director Daniel is furious. He expels both girls permanently from CIGI and will not grant refunds. Even though Kristina is not listed on Avery’s emergency form, she is easily able to sign paperwork for Avery’s release as her biological mother. However, when she tries to take Bett as well, Director Daniel denies her: Betty (Gaga) Devlin is listed as Bett’s emergency contact.
Pages 50-100 Analysis
In this second section of the novel, the question no longer exists of whether Bett and Avery are friends. The girls now admit this themselves; when Bett emails Kristina, she introduces herself as Avery’s friend. Additionally, both girls appear to have accepted the idea of enlarging their families, at least to include one another: They like each other and have been having fun together.
Nevertheless, the question of what “family” means and to what extent a child can define their own family becomes more complex as the novel progresses. Whereas before Avery only revealed that her biological mother was a friend of her father’s from college, she now discloses more details to Bett, including her mother’s name. Besides demonstrating the strength of the girls’ bond, this revelation offers further insight into Bett’s definition of “family.” Even though Kristina and Avery have been out of touch for years, Bett is bold enough to invite Kristina to Family Day in case she wants a relationship with Avery now. Although Bett’s violation of Avery’s trust initially threatens to destabilize the girls’ friendship, the reunion between Avery and Kristina would not have occurred without Bett’s (somewhat rash and presumptuous) actions. Bett acts as a link between Kristina and Avery, suggesting that children do have some control over their families, or whom they recognize as family.
Bett also seems to believe in a chain reaction of family: Since Kristina is Avery’s family, she’s going to be Bett’s family too. Although Bett suggests that this relationship hinges on Sam and Marlow ultimately marrying, the girls have actually done all this family-forming almost completely on their own. Avery has never met Marlow, nor has Bett met Sam, and they’ve had limited contact with their own fathers all summer. Additionally, Sam never would have agreed to let Kristina visit if he had been there. Kristina seems to share Bett’s expansive view of The Diversity of Family Structures and Found Family, quickly taking to both girls. This is in keeping with Kristina’s open and somewhat rebellious personality; it is she who inadvertently gets the girls expelled from camp.
Other characters cleave to more “traditional” views of family, as when Director Daniel allows Avery but not Bett to leave with Kristina. He makes the decision based on Kristina’s biological relationship to Avery, even though she is not Avery’s official emergency contact. He is not willing to break the same rule for Bett because she has no biological relation to Kristina (even though she has spent about the same amount of time with Kristina as Avery, at least that the girls can remember). This moment is a rude wake-up call for the girls in that it reminds them that they are still subject to rules dictated by adults. It also illustrates the complex relationship between family and the theme of Tradition, Change, and Acceptance. The girls have so far largely been reluctant to accept changes to the family structure with which they’re familiar, but the director’s actions show that something can be customary for no good reason.
The epistolary form becomes more complex in this section, showing emails and letters from characters including Sam, Marlow, Gaga, Kristina, and Director Daniel. This allows the other characters to speak for themselves, with differences in their writing styles also revealing aspects of their personalities. For example, Sam’s style is similar to Avery’s in its formality, but more mature and forceful. He often starts his own email rather than replying to someone else’s subject line. Kristina, as a playwright, is long-winded and poetic, peppering her stories with intellectual insights. Gaga is direct, funny, and fond of offbeat sayings. Additionally, small differences in how characters relate the same information to different people reveal nuances in their relationships and motives. For example, Bett approaches Kristina, an adult, with a more formal tone and style than she did Avery.
As the girls become closer, their emails to each other become more stylistically intimate. In the first section, they either omitted salutations and signatures or simply used their first names or initials. In the second section, the girls start to use code names for each other (Dogfish and Night Owl) and sign-offs like “Xo” and “Love.” The creation of the nicknames between the girls symbolizes a point of no return in their friendship, with nicknames in general (e.g., “Gaga” for Betty) often indicating closeness between characters.
The girls are so wrapped up in their new friendship with each other and with Kristina that they ignore the signs of their fathers’ crumbling relationship in China. This complicates the concept of chosen family: The girls have decided that they are family despite what’s happening with their fathers, who were the ones who originally “chose” for the girls to become a family.
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