Passive descension

I've read more books in the last ten days than I have in the past three months. It's good; it's brain food.

I'm very into children's books right now - currently the Edge Chronicles, a series that is very in keeping with my notions of fantasticism, especially with regard to the age range (~9-12). It creates a place wholly separate to our world and populates it accordingly - new flora, new fauna, different physical, chemical and biological laws. There are obviously strong similarities to our world and this new one, yet they are base; banderbears appear, at first, like brown bears, until we learn that they possess language skills (of a sort) such as yodelling, that they are herbivores, and that their fur is covered in a green moss. Even subtle social perceptions differ - for example, the slaughters spend all their lives hunting, killing and trading the flesh of beasts, yet they are arguably the most welcoming and kind-hearted people encountered during the course of the first book.

Ideas like these, although simple in realisation, are what inspire me.