I’m having a proud Dad moment. Both my daughter and I love books. We are both surrounded by them. We check out a lot of books from the library. We both ensure we have a lot of solo reading time. But, she REALLY loves her books in the way that only kids can get obsessed with certain things. The characters she is in love with seem to expand into everything she does.

Her current obsession is with a series of books known as Warrior Cats, which details the adventures and struggles betweens various clans of wild cats. It is written by Erin Hunter, which is a psudeonym for a team of writers. It’s detailed world is absolutely the perfect thing for an animal loving story fiend like my daughter.

A great side-effect of her obsession with a fictional universe is how she can make it her own by mimicing the laws of the clans with stuffed animals or writing her own fan fiction, or brand new stories, using the examples of the books.

For example, we’ve had cat clan meetings on the couch recently:

And, we’ve had an explosion of inspired art and stories:

Last but not least, the framewok and style of storytelling she’s learned from reading has expanded into all her stories:

I love how Vivan enjoys her reading, how she jumps from one book to another with no care in the world other than to read something interesting, and how she mimics the art she loves so closely and then learns to make something wholly her own.

I’ve got a lot to learn from her.