Erin Hunter’s Bravelands, Shifting Shadows is a savannah adventure for 10 year olds told entirely by the animals who live there.<\/p>\n
Bravelands runs on one rule. Only kill to survive. Every creature knows it, and for as long as anyone can remember there has been a Great Parent to hold them all to it.<\/p>\n
Right now there is not one. The false leader who caused all the trouble is dead, the animals fought a battle to be rid of him, and since then the Great Spirit has gone quiet. Nobody has come forward.<\/p>\n
This book sits later in the series, so that battle is already behind everyone on page one. Your reader will pick up what happened from the way the animals keep circling back to it, although starting nearer the beginning would be kinder.<\/p>\n
Three animals take turns telling it. Thorn is a baboon being followed about by vultures who keep calling him Great Father, which he flatly refuses to be. Sky is a young elephant who can read the memories held in bones, and who did something in that battle she cannot forgive herself for. Fearless is a lion, leading his own pride and quietly out of step with them.<\/p>\n
All three keep finding things that should not be there. A hyena killed and left uneaten. A whole family of giraffes dead in a watering hole with nothing to explain it. Something is breaking the rule, and none of them can see what.<\/p>\n
The animal detail is what makes it, more than the mystery. Baboons arguing about rank and then wrestling in the leaves over whose breath is worse. Elephant aunts forming a line in front of a young female and shouting a bull off the riverbank. Lions being witheringly rude about giraffes.<\/p>\n
Worth knowing before you hand it over. It opens on a chase, and the ostrich being chased is killed on the page while his friend runs on ahead and then comes back for the body. Animal death turns up again and again after that, and some of it is deliberate cruelty rather than hunting. A child who finds harm to animals hard will find this a difficult book, and the first four pages will tell you that straight away. A child who already loves animals with politics and grief and codes of honour will be very happy indeed.<\/p>\n
If the clans and the code are the draw, Into the Wild starts Erin Hunter’s other big animal series right at the beginning, with four groups of forest cats, a set of laws laid down by their warrior ancestors, and an ordinary house cat who wanders in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Erin Hunter’s Bravelands, Shifting Shadows is a savannah adventure for 10 year olds told entirely by the animals who live there. Bravelands runs on one rule. Only kill to survive. Every creature knows it, and for as long as anyone can remember there has been a Great Parent to hold them all to it. Right […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":10822,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":9676,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Into the Wild","lr_seo_hook":"Three animals, one broken rule and no Great Parent left to enforce it."},"book_tag":[1045],"age_group":[29],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[314],"class_list":["post-6996","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-adventure-books","age_group-books-for-10-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-erin-hunter"],"yoast_title":"Bravelands – Shifting Shadows by Erin Hunter | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"Three animals, one broken rule and no Great Parent left to enforce it. For ages 10+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n