GUARDIANS OF GA'HOOLE:THE CAPTURE

The Capture
Soren, who lives in a nest with his parents Noctus and Marella and siblings Kludd and Eglantine in a forest kingdom called Tyto, fell out of the nest. (It is later revealed that he was pushed by Kludd.) When he cries out to his parents for help, Soren is found and snatched by a patrol of the evil owls from the St. Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls, or St. Aggie's. Soren and other snatched owlets are enslaved into tasks such as sorting eggs and pellets, for reasons they don't quite understand. Owls at St. Aggie's are "moon blinked", a brainwashing technique caused by sleeping under the full moon and also marching under the light of the full moon and endlessly repeating their true names to forget them so as to lose a sense of self and will. Soren befriends a young elf owl named Gylfie (from the desert kingdom of Kuneer), who, like him, is resistant to the moon-blinking, by staying awake during full shine, and together they plot both to discover as much as possible about the true purpose behind St. Aggie's and to escape. The two also befriend a spotted owl named Hortense. They also find a partly moon-blinked boreal owl named Grimble and plan to escape with Grimble's assistance. Grimble is murdered the night Soren and Gylfie escape by St. Aggie's leader Skench the great horned owl and her lieutenant Spoorn the western screech owl. After escaping, they then meet Twilight, an orphan great gray owl who learned his survival instincts from the "Orphan School of Tough Learning", Digger, a burrowing owl, who lost his family to the St. Aggie's marauders and is extremely sensitive and philosophical, and the old Mrs. Plithiver, Soren's former nest-maid western blind snake. With the help of Hortense's two bald eagle friends named Streak and Zan, they killed two of St. Aggie's patrols, the cousins Jatt and Jutt the long-eared owls.