C. and I participated in Jennifer‘s Read Together mission and we finally finished our book a week or so ago. We have been working our way through The Warriors series for months, and when Jennifer started the mission, we were getting ready to dive into book five of the series, A Dangerous Path.

For those who aren’t familiar with The Warriors, there are currently 3 sub-series in the overall series, and the books center around four clans of wild cats. The books are full of hunting for prey, training younger cats, fighting over territory and power, and even a smattering of kitty cat romance.

This book took us about a month to read, spending 15-30 minutes reading together each night. We did it as a read-aloud. I did most of the reading, but there were several nights when I was exhausted or my throat hurt, and C. took over the job of reading with no hesitation. Other nights, we each took a turn reading.

C. loved the book, as he has loved every book in this series. I enjoyed it as well, although I felt the plot in this book dragged at times.

Some of the things I liked best about reading this book together:

• The joy of hearing what a great reader C. is. He loves to read on his own, but it was so enjoyable to listen to him read. It’s amazing to watch kids go from barely knowing their alphabet to reading complex sentences and long, involved paragraphs in only a couple years.

• The chance to discuss ethically questionable behavior. Throughout The Warriors series, one aspect of the characters has annoyed me more than all others: they justify “little lies.” At least once or twice per book, a main character is put in a tough place where telling the truth would make things difficult, escalate a conflict, or anger another character. Over and over, the character rationalizes why he needs to lie. The author includes things like, “He wished he didn’t have to lie, but…” or “He wanted to tell the truth, but…” Argh! How annoying! So I’m glad we’re reading these together, and can discuss what other options the cat would have. We’ve talked about the fact that telling the truth may not always be easy, but that it’s the right thing to do.

• An opportunity to talk about faith. In A Dangerous Path, Bluestar (leader of Thunderclan) loses her faith in what the cats call Starclan (basically their kitty ancestors, who continue to guide them). She feels that Starclan has let too many horrible things happen and concludes that either they don’t exist or they don’t care. What a perfect segue to talking about faith and how people might lose faith in God when tough times come. I’ve seen it happen more than once: someone questions whether or not God exists when they see all the evil in the world, or they decide that God must not care about them when they’ve suffered a personal tragedy. C. and I had some great discussions about God, His love, and faith as the book went along and [spoiler warning here] I was glad to see that Bluestar’s faith was revived by the end of the book.

• Time together. This summer has felt crazy, and having a very busy and trouble-making adventurous 1-year-old around means that C. and I don’t have a lot of time to just hang out. But setting aside this time to read together every night ensured that we spent time together daily.

Thanks again, Jennifer, for organizing this fantastic mission!

Click here to read more Read Together wrap-ups.