Warriors : Into the wild (Book 1) By Erin Hunter

This is one of the books that lots of upper elementary and middle schoolers are currently reading. The main character is a young male cat who joins the Thunderclan of wild cats in the forest. He is given the name Firepaw and helps to hunt and protect the borders of their territory from the other three clans. Their "warrior code" teaches responsibility, family, honor and hardships.

With self discovery and a few twists along the way I found this to be an enjoyable read and can see why it is popular. That and it has several other series based off this which gives kids familiar characters and ideas to follow though many books. This is one of those books where quite a few names are thrown at you fairly quickly. It may take your child rereading the first few chapters to keep track of characters. This is not uncommon in books and your children need to know that even adults reread chapters to keep details straight. As you may have noticed, this is a book about cat warriors and has some violence. While frequent, it is not overly detailed or glorified. I did not notice any other real issues such as language or adult situations to be concerned about.

The interest level and reading level is 4th - 8th grade depending on the child. It is worth 10.0 AR points and ATOS Book Level is 5.6.

Why we do this

Our purpose is to review children's and teen books and tell you what grade level or age it is appropriate for. We will also give our review of the book and point out what content you might find questionable.

We initially began doing this because our eldest reads beyond his grade level. We wanted him to still be challenged but were afraid of the content of these books that were aimed at older children. As avid readers we wanted our children to have a passion for reading while hopefully not "burning them out." We have been doing this for our children for many years now and thought we should share our findings. We have many thousands of books in our at home library that we have read and checked for the children. Heather would always label our books by grade level and AR points and we'd box them accordingly. I will be re-reading these as I post these reviews and I'll try to get my children's reactions to these books in addition to ours.

Who are we and why should you take our opinion? Well I think we are like most parents in that we want the best for our children. My name is Colton and I will probably write the majority of these posts. My wife is Heather and we have three children aged 8, 9 and 10. Two boys and our poor girl stuck in the middle. My wife is a children's educator and also a librarian so she tends to know what the children are interested in. Our eldest, Kane, is considered gifted in most areas including reading. Our daughter, Angel, had some considerable issues at birth and is considered special needs. She reads close to her grade level but is significantly lower in terms of comprehension of what she has read. Our youngest, Scott, is a bit advanced in terms of reading but is also frustrated easily. As you can tell, at some point one of our children was probably similar in reading to your children. We'd love to share what we have learned if you'll allow us to.

Buckle up for a wonderful journey in literature with our family and yours!