Learning to be a warrior

(Editor's note: Tuckahoe Middle School seventh-grade English students recently wrote editorials designed to persuade Henrico citizens to read, listen to or watch a story or book that reflected their individual cultures, as a way to help others better understand them. This is one of those editorials; click here to read others.)

I am a 13 year old girl who grew up in a small teeny tiny Christian School. I didn't have very many friends but the friends I had were close to my heart. I started martial arts when I was 11, and I must say that I was overwhelmed with the amount of people there. I was only used to about 20 kids in my whole school and about 7 kids in my class, so seeing 50 plus kids in one huge room was a bit intimidating. I slowly started to become what I call a "worldly person." I started to see what the world was because being in a small place for so long you actually don’t learn that much about the outside world.

Warriors by Erin Hunter is a great book that I connect to. This is a fantasy book where I can escape just the world and reality and not be so impacted by the negative things in life. I also feel a connection to the main character a cat named Fire Heart. Fire Heart is like me in a way; he was sheltered in a house with his human caretakers and didn’t see the reality of the world just like how I was with my small Christian school. But Fire Heart soon goes into the forest to join clan cats who have to fight for their food and their land and he realizes that his life he was living did not see the true reality of what the world is.

He was made fun of for being confused and disoriented and overwhelmed and he has been in the forest for quite a while but the cats still make fun of him because he was not “clan born.” I feel like this in my day to day life because I was sheltered for 10 years and didn’t see the harsh truth of the world and I wonder if things would have been different had I known the whole time.

I think that Warriors should be read by all members of the community because if you feel like you have been left out on the world this book can be a way for you to realize that opening up to the world is not a bad thing though it may be an overwhelming experience. Plus you can follow along on a fun story about a cat that went through some tough stuff and you can still learn while reading a fantasy book.