According to the website Literacious, xenofiction can be defined as “stories told from the perspective of something or someone who is not human,” This can include anything from aliens, sentient objects, and yes—animals. That said, animal xenofiction is focused specifically on telling a story from the perspective of animals, and it remains a particularly popular area of children’s literature—especially in middle grade books.
The earliest instance of this type of story I am aware of comes from the novel Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, reaching all the way back to 1877! Close to a century later, the next book of this subgenre to garner significant attention is the infamously gory Watership Down, first published in 1972 with great difficulty by author Richard Adams—I can’t imagine why. After Adams’ work, the closest book within the subgenre comes after a two-decade gap, in the year 1996 with Dr. Robert T. Bakker’s Raptor Red, told from the perspective of a velociraptor.
These books are the predecessors that paved the way for the subgenre’s existence and ideas, but it isn’t until Kenneth Oppel’s Silverwing—originally published in 1997—that we see the patterns that would create the beast the 2000s era animal-xenofiction novel became. When Bakker set out to write Raptor Red, his interest was partially in getting scientific information about dinosaurs to the public, which came from his background as a paleontologist. But where his novel loosely mirrored the hero’s journey structure with his protagonist, Oppel’s novel lived by it, introducing young readers to a classic hero’s journey tale set in the world of bats. Coupled with rich world-building and mythology behind bat society, it’s no wonder the series not only won multiple awards but was even able to spawn its own cartoon adaptation.
From there, the Erin Hunter team was able to ride the wave with their ever popular Warriors series in 2003, which also followed a traditional hero’s journey structure coupled with detailed fantasy world-building around tribal cat society just like Oppel’s series. Their books not only spanned a considerable number of entries, but also created a massive fanbase among young readers and became the pseudonym’s niche even today. The team’s latest book, set for publication in May 2026 and sparking the new Renegades series, continues the cat xenofiction trend which won such success with Warriors. Clearly, Oppel and HarperCollins’ team set the initial standard for what the successful animal xenofiction formula was.
The explosion of the trend in the early 2000s hasn’t disappeared completely even two decades later. Besides the continuation of the Erin Hunter team’s works, other authors have also carried it forward into the current day. Rosanne Parry got her start in the subgenre in 2019 with her book A Wolf Called Wander, and wrote a follow up to it in 2025 titled A Wolf Called Fire. Both books, like Oppel’s and the Hunter team’s formula, use a traditional hero’s journey structure in the bones of their storytelling model, with the protagonist of her 2019 book, Wander, forced to travel a great distance to find a new home, and the protagonist of her 2025 book having to mentor and care for his younger siblings to survive. The hero’s journey remains an integral part of the trend’s identity and has survived even in more recent middle grade novels.
However, some have made decidedly creative spins on the mythological and fantasy aspects also at the core of the subgenre, such as Aubrey Hartman’s The Undead Fox of Deadwood Forest, which released early in 2025. In it, a fox named Clare agrees to act as an undead usher, tasked with guiding the souls of other animals. The setting appears a bit darker at first due to dealing primarily with the afterlife, something previous iterations in the subgenre like the Warriors series addressed but kept to the sidelines. Hartman’s book not only explores the concept further by making it the main setting, but makes it a charming and captivating place for readers to connect with her characters as they continue the tradition of the hero’s journey structure.
Based on the most recent releases, the subgenre has maintained the core parts of its identity which were established in the initial boom of popularity in the early 2000s, but it remains to be seen how or if it might build further upon its formula. Hartman’s novel has shown an incredible potential to explore other aspects of fantasy world-building otherwise left untouched, but we are still waiting for another Kenneth Oppel to invent something new upon the existing formula. Or is it for the best that formula remains a core part of the subgenre’s identity to be carried through the years?
Julia Smith, Pine Reads Review Writer and Editor