Warriors: Firestar's Quest by Erin Hunter

My third grade son checked this out from the library, I think so I could read it! I have found it more difficult to get my son interested in reading, where as my girls were easily engaged. Finding books interesting to a 8 year old boy that don't feature potty humor or pictures has been a challenge. At 510 pages, this is more book than my third graders attention span can handle. Still, if you have a kid who does read larger volumes, it is not a difficult read, and a pleasurable one! The idea is not a new one; a society of animals who have rules, law, families, language, memory, religion, love, enemies, regrets, etc. much like Watership Down or The Hundred Acre Wood. What was interesting was the choice of felines. Cats are the only domesticated species that can successfully be feral, and domestic, even switching between both modes in one lifetime. The cats of the Warriors series are Clan Cats, Rogues, or Kittypets. The society is of the Clan Cats, but Rogues and Kittypets can join a Clan, and Clan cats periodically go to live the simple life of the kittypet. The author is evidently a student of cat behavior, and many of the cat characters reminded me of cats in my life and my profession as a Veterinarian. Although the book is written for a child audience, it was entertaining enough for me to wonder how it would all turn out for Firestar and Sandstorm(his mate). Some violence- the cats catch bird, mice, voles etc. for food and have a battle with the rats of the Twoleg barn (how one deserted barn could support the hundreds of rats living there was one of the unanswered puzzles for me)but language is clean, and no sexual content warnings (another puzzle was how so many un-neutered cats lived together with so few kittens?). With more than a dozen Warriors books available, if you judge an entire series by one book ( hazardous, I realize) a child invested in this series could have many trips to the library with this Clan.