Warriors 1: Into the Wild

Written by: Erin Hunter

First line: A half-moon glowed on smooth granite boulders, turning them silver.

Why you should read this book: Rusty, a young house cat, hears the call of the wild, takes off into the little bit of forest beyond his village, and is inducted into a new world of free clan cats, who live cooperatively in small groups where they care for one another and defend their territory against outsiders. Scorned as a soft and useless "kittypet" who may be unfit for forest dwelling due to his association with the "twolegs," Rusty gets lucky, showing up at a time when Thunderclan's low birth rate and apparently high mortality rate means they are in need of new members, and he is accepted as an apprentice warrior and given the apprentice name, Firepaw, as he learns the ways of his new world. But all is not peaceful in the forest, as the dangerous machinations of the devious Shadowclan and potential betrayals within Thunderclan itself threaten to destroy Firepaw's new home before he even has a chance to prove himself.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Honestly, there are dozens of better-written fighting animal books; I'd read Redwall or Watership Down or Guardians of Ga'hoole before I got into a relationship with this slow, written-by-committee, lowest-common-denominator series (unfortunately for me, I've already read those books and this was the series my stepdaughter wanted me to commit to, which I did, because I love her and not because she's qualified to write literary criticism).