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November 13, 2008
Into the Wild by Erin Hunter, or Like Redwall Without the Riddles and Good Food
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the trouble I was having finishing Into the Wild by Erin Apparently-I’m-Really-FOUR-People Hunter. I finally finished it yesterday.
Wow, I did not like that book.
Several years ago, I read an excellent book by, I think, an Australian author about an abandoned cat trying to figure out life in the wild. I’ve been using all my mad librarian skillz, but I can’t find the title or author, so maybe I just made it up in my head. As I remember it, though, this book was colossally depressing because that’s what life’s like for housecats out in the wide world. The poor cats are always getting hit by cars or contracting diseases or being forced to fight with another animal or getting injured or going hungry—or more likely an ever-changing combination of all these things.
Into the Wild sets up a story where feral cats are strong and healthy and live in packs and are continually engaged in honorable battles to defend their territory. The book is solidly in the Glorifying Violence genre. To give you the basics, the story follows Rusty, a housecat who decides to join a “clan” of feral cats, where he is promptly renamed “Firepaw.” By the end of the book, his name is changed to “Fireheart” in honor of the bravery he shows training and helping out other cats and defending his clan and etc. It’s not that I have a philosophical problem with this sort of thing; it just bores me. I buy the concept of individuals making honorable decisions in violent circumstances, but there is no inherent honor in battle. The cats in this book are waiting-just-waiting to go fight. Judging from my cats, that’s not a stretch of cat mentality, but, still, we all know that the animals in children’s books are stand-ins for humans and there you go. I get why people like this; I just don’t.
Of course, Into the Wild put me in mind of nothing so much as Redwall by Brian Jacques, which, I’ll admit, I was kind of into for a while some years back. As I avoided finishing Into the Wild, I kept wondering why I enjoyed Redwall and hated this, and I realized that it, like so many other things in my life, came down to the quality of the food. In Redwall, the creatures are forever eating wonderful, yummy things like roasted chestnuts. In Into the Wild, the cats live on a diet of raw rodents and birds. I know it’s more realistic, but my fiction tastes don’t require absolute realism. My tastes, I find, vastly prefer a decent meal. I also really loved the riddles in the Redwall series. Into the Wild got the most interesting to me toward the end, when Rusty/Firepaw/Fireheart finally found himself entangled in a situation whose exit strategy wasn’t (unlike the rest of the book) readily apparent. Could it be that I prefer books that make me think? Apparently I do.
A friend who read the Warriors series with her son told me that it continues on like a soap opera, and I can definitely see how that would be with the numerous characters, developing drama, and slight-cliffhanger ending. Cool. I’m glad the kids have something they’re excited about. Me? Last night when I finished Into the Wild, I started Almost Alice by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. I think I’ll go finish reading it now.
[Thanks to Fuse #8 for the link that taught me about Erin Hunter’s proliferating identity.]
Books mentioned:
Hunter, Erin W. Into the Wild. NY: HarperCollins, 2003. (HC: 9780060000028, LIB: 9780060525484, PB: 9780060525507)
Jacques, Brian. Redwall. NY: Philomel Books, 1986. (HC: 9780399247941, PB: 9780399236297)
Naylor, Phyllis Reynolds. Almost Alice. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2008. (HC: 9780689870965)
Posted by adrienne at November 13, 2008 10:26 AM
Comments
This might not be the book your looking for but it's a good cat in the city book anyway- Varjak Paw by SF Said and illustrated by Dave McKean.
Posted by: Lori at November 13, 2008 12:47 PM
That isn't the one I was thinking of, but it looks good. Love those illustrations.
Posted by: adrienne at November 13, 2008 02:03 PM
Whoa. FOUR people, and still ended up with pseudo Redwall? Whoa.
Okay, that wasn't nice. The real problem for me is the whole anthropomorphic thing; it's always a struggle. Some books go gracefully into the standing-in-for-humans thing; others try too hard to leave in elements of the animal, and it just doesn't really work...
Posted by: TadMack at November 14, 2008 07:47 AM
When I was reading, one thing I struggled with in regard to the anthropomorphism was the cats' language. They called humans "two-legs," for example, and they called human homes "nests." But then they seemed to know the words for all kinds of other things (for instance, poppies--WHY would a cat know or even care what a poppy is?). There was some internal logic to it, as the cats confined most of their made-up words to human things, but I found it distracting.
Of course, when I write from my cats' perspective, I have them make up words, too. So I'm a fine one to talk.
Posted by: adrienne at November 14, 2008 09:58 AM
Kit & Kat always make their positions and thoughts very well known.That is to say,it isn't a stretch for Adrienne to write from their perspectives:)
Posted by: momster at November 14, 2008 01:39 PM
So you like books with good food that make you think? I can climb on board with that. Maybe it should become a review question that I ask myself or an interview question for authors: Does this book have good food? And does it make me think? Or does it spoil my appetite and dull my brain?
I'm going to keep those characteristics in mind as I read the rest of the Cybils nominees.
Posted by: Sherry Early at November 14, 2008 04:04 PM
Maybe one day we can do a Good Books With Good Food That Make Us Think post -- a bunch of us bloggers, banding together, and listing away.
Posted by: jules at November 14, 2008 05:47 PM
Momster, So true. Sometimes I think Ella, in particular, is on the verge of words.
Sherry, Maybe we could lobby to make "Books with Good Food" an official Cybils category. ;)
Jules, Wouldn't that be an awesome Thanksgiving post-a-rama? Everyone posting about their favorite books involving good food? My #1 favorites are Home Cooking and More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin, although my list could be very extensive. Lately, I love, love, loved the food in TadMack's A La Carte. (TadMack=Tanita Davis, for the uninitiated. I'd hate for someone to miss the book.)
Posted by: adrienne at November 15, 2008 12:08 PM
This is some of the most insightful commentary about Redwall that I have ever read. Jacques has talked about his interest in all things food and how it has figured in his books. There have even been Redwall cookbooks.
One of my daughters used to only buy purses that were big enough to hold her hardcover Redwall books. They were not allowed to carry their backpacks to class in jr. high but she always had her book with her in her old granny size purse.
Posted by: BookMoot at November 20, 2008 02:12 AM
Oh, I saw Jacques speak live once, and he was such an energetic, wonderful speaker.
Posted by: adrienne at November 21, 2008 08:14 PM
I read Into the Wild last year in the hopes of using it for a book club selection, but I just couldn't get over the ridiculous dialogue and the fact that these cute cuddly cats were referring to each other as Fireheart, Tigerclaw and Silverpaw. It just kept playing in my mind as an old Saturday Night Live sketch. Picture Belushi, Radner and Ackroyd with whiskers.
I can suspend my disbelief for many things, especially for children's books, but these books just made me giggle.
Posted by: Jeriann at May 22, 2009 04:34 PM