It’s Thursday and that means it’s time for another Trope Thursday. This is a recommendations post in which I generate a random trope from TVTropes and create a recommendations list based on that trope. This weeks trope is Civilised Animals
From the Trope Page:
Civilized Animals exhibit some form of civilized manner, but otherwise occupy their species’s natural role in the ecosystem and (especially) the food chain. They generally display half the mannerisms of a human character and half the mannerisms of an animal character. They may wear clothes (often being accessory wearing, half dressed or even barefoot, but otherwise fully-dressed), or may live in houses, and are frequently depicted as walking on two legs; but their anthropomorphism stops abruptly at this point, as their everyday concerns are for ordinary activities such as acquiring food and avoiding predation by larger animals. Civilized Animals are typical of children’s stories, especially that of British literature.
So this week I thought was really interesting. Civilised Animals as characters was actually my favourite genre sort of thing as a child. So immediately kidlit came to my attention. Below is some of the recommendations I have for books featuring this trope
Kid Lit:1: The Guardians of Ga’Hoole by Kathryn Lasky
2: The Warrior Cats series by Erin Hunter
Since this trope IS known for it’s children stories, I thought I’d mention two of my favourite series as a kids featuring animals. Guardians of Ga’Hoole was my absoute favourite and features Owls which act like owls but also .. don’t. They read books, create weapons and wage war against eachother.
Warrior cats are really popular and I loved the different stories about cats and their adventures inthe forest. I read soo many of these books
1: The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S Lewis
I feel like this is a really obvious one, but this series features a lot of civilised animals and it’s one of my favourite series. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe is the most popular of the series, I’ve read all seven books and I really enjoyed all of them. Across the many worlds the main characters go to, they meet lots of talking, civilised animals and some of those animals, especially Aslan, were my favourite characters.
2: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol
This is another classic I really like, and has civlised animals such as the White Rabbit, and the Hare at the Mad Hatters tea party. The original Alice in Wonderland is super creepy and weird, and I would like to reread it one day since I first read it as a kid.
3: Watership Down by Richard Adams
This is another classic (I don’t know why all these ended up being classics ha). Watership Down is about a group of rabbits who decide to move warrens after one of the rabbits has a premonition that their warren will be destroyed. The story follows the rabbits as they try to find a new home. This one might be a bit tenuous to the trope, as the rabbits don’t really act in humans ways much – but the fact they talk to eachother, narrate the story and have premonitions made me squeeze it in anyway.
Those are some books featuring the Civilised Animals trope! Some of these are actually books I really really enjoyed, I was a massive fan of the animals genre as a kid. ? I didn’t mention them here but I was also such a big fan of Beatrix Potter.
What books with animals did everyone else like?
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