Seven Books in Seven Days #6

This is the second to last entry in this series I've been running on weekends, where I talk a bit about the seven books (or series) that most influenced me growing up. See previous entries in this series here: day one, day two, day three, day four, day five. This will not be in any particular order, as it's hard to put these seven in any sort of favorite to least favorite order.

Does animals as the main characters in fiction automatically make the book middle grade? Or a younger YA? I mean, the Spirit Animals and Warriors series are vast and I think are middle grade, maybe dips into more adult ideas. I haven't read them and I think the time were I would have passed, but feel free to convince me otherwise! But then we have Animal Farm, which is decidedly not. You don't often see adult books that center around anthropomorphic animals. Is it childish to see them as such? I think books that center around animals are either love it or leave it, especially as you get older, which is unfortunate. The sheer amount of variety and weirdness that is the animal kingdom could, in theory, lend to lots of fiction. I've never thought about it before I started thinking about this blog post

When I was younger, I read Watership Down. It was fascinating and has since been in my top ten favorite books. Reading about the level of research Richard Adams put into it was admirable. It was just a story about rabbits, real rabbits, but it was so much more.

It wasn't long after that I found the Redwall stories. Now these, not so grounded in real life, were very entertaining. They indulged my sword and sworcery obsession (that's still kicking) and had furry little narrators that were courageous and clever. The adventure and mystery in these stories just had me gobbling them up.

I have a few in paperback and several on my Kindle. I'd love to do a reread (and likely read a few new ones as it was still active when I originally started reading it) but it's daunting. There are 22 or so books. I think the last one I read was Lord Brocktree, which is the 13th one, but I can't be sure if I've picked up any of the rest.

Did you read books featuring animals as a kid? Did you grow out of it? Do you think we should?

Note: So, to anyone reading this is aware, there will be a longer than usual delay in the last post due to the holiday (even though we're not doing anything, the fam will be home from work and I'm going to have to work the next day, so) and the need to find a different topic as the one I'd chosen originally isn't something I'm going to discuss any further on my blog.

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