CCSprite Inheritance in Cocos2d-iPhone

I am prepared for many places that tell me that I should not inherit the CCSprite class, but simply add a sprite to my class as a member variable.

Here's what I did: Created a CCNode class, Added the CCSprite variable to my node class Initialized my sprite and added it as a child to my node.

Now I have CCLayer where I want to draw these sprites, but when I add my node as a child, nothing is drawn. If I add sprite nodes as a child, not a node, it will draw.

My question is, is there a way to make my sprites draw from adding node as a child of the layer or does it add sprites only?

I am new to Objective-c and iPhone dev, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Edit Here is my CCNode class - animalSprite - my CCSprite.

    @implementation Animal

    @synthesize animalSprite = _animalSprite;

    -(Animal *) initWithFile:(NSString *)texture position:(CGPoint) position
    {
        self.animalSprite = [CCSprite spriteWithFile:texture];
        self.animalSprite.position = position;
        self.animalSprite.scale = 0.25f;
        [self addChild:self.animalSprite];

        return self;
    }

    -(void) dealloc{

        [super dealloc];
    }

@end

Now in my CCLayer class, I have a level variable that contains a list of my nodes.

//Load Level
Level *level = [LoadLevel loadLevel];

for (Animal *animal in level.animals)
{
    [self addChild:animal];
}

Change I create node objects and then add them to an array of class classes as follows.

Animal *animal = [[[Animal alloc] initWithFile:animalFileName position:position] autorelease];
[level.animals addObject:animal];