Literature: Raccoons Can Go To School

Thankfully, my son enjoys reading. Yes, he partakes of video games and like many 12 year olds he would happily live in front of a computer screen or console game while being fed intravenously but he also likes to read. We talk about what he is reading (and I secretly harbor hope he will someday learn to summarize novels without retelling the whole book). His most recent literary interest is a series called “Warriors” by Erin Hunter.

Erin Hunter is actually three separate women. Victoria Holmes comes up with the story ideas and the other two women, Kate Cary and Cherith Baldry, take turns writing the books. The novels are about clans of cats that live just outside “Twolegplace,” where some cats, known as kittypets, live in lavish comfort. The cat clans outside of Twolegplace fight over hunting grounds and young cats try to prove themselves as warriors. Fighting and talking cats! Win. Win.

I started reading “Into the Wild,” today. This is the first book in the Warrior Series. I believe I have just been introduced to what will later be Firepaw, if I managed to keep any of what he told me straight – there were a lot of paws and furs and hearts to keep track of afterall. If I am correct, Firepaw started out as Rusty, a kittypet. Times are hard for the Thunderclan and they are having to look for warriors of fighting age, as opposed to the kits in training. Rusty is bored with his complacent life and the idea of fighting among a clan of his kind appeals to him. I can see that they have little respect for kittypets so our hero also has that to overcome.

Reading this reminds me of many of my favorite stories growing up. We have our love of intelligent, talking animal heroes in our stories. I loved books like “Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh,” “The Mouse and the Motorcycle,” and “Bunnicula.” Later, I enjoyed Koontz’s occasional intelligent animal character like those in “Watchers.” I fell hopelessly in love with Perrin Aybara in “The Wheel of Time” series after he found the wolves. In spite of sometimes reading like a bad romance novel, I found increasing enjoyment in the series of books about Firestarter by Jane Lindskold.

One day P came home from Kindergarten upset. I asked him what was wrong. He said that they were talking about reality verses fiction. He said the teacher asked if raccoons really could go to school. The class said no. He told me he said no too but he didn’t want to. He wanted to think they could go to school. I wanted to go bonk someone on the head and ask them why they were out to squelch any trace of imagination starting in freakin KINDERGARTEN. I told him I liked to think they could go to school too. We will go on thinking animals do talk - we just have to be quiet and listen. We will go on imagining their secret lives that are in some ways like ours. I look forward to reading the rest of the series and talking about it with my son.