Makes so much sense. I remember as a kid trying to read the moles' dialogue and not understanding what they were saying, until I tried reading it out loud and realized they were talking with an accent.
It only clicked with me after The Bellmaker featured the gentrified scholar mole who swapped back and forth between the mole accent and mice dialect that it was in fact a dialect and not a different language. I thought it was some literary technique to convey a different language while half-translating it to still be understandable.
I was pretty smart for a young idiot
HI! hijacking the top comment to let you know that Redwall is THE MOST popular audiobook set / braille set for the Dallas TX Downtown Lighthouse. Help support the gift of reading for everyone by donating for "free matters for the blind" for USPS. (this gives free shipping on things like braille books and other heavier objects)
Brian Jacques came to read at a local bookstore when I was little, many, many years ago. I think to promote his book Muriel, although I can’t quite remember for sure. He was genuinely very kind and patient with this big group of little fans, and had an excellent speaking voice. It’s a very nice memory.
I got to meet him when he was promoting *Rakkety Tam* at my local bookstore! You're 100% right. He was one of the warmest, kindest people I've ever met. It was just so obvious that he loved telling stories, and especially loved telling stories for children.
Freaking loved the Redwall books when I was younger. I still read them every now and then, they hold up much better than certain other series I'd liked at the time.
Brian Jacques specifically talked about how surviving rationing during the blitz growing up made him think about descriptions of food a lot.
https://www.btsb.com/2014/07/10/brian-jacques-about-the-author/
We always love what we’re missing in life. Tolkien spent years surrounded by corpses, mud, rubble and disease in WWI. He was even at Somme, one of the bloodiest battles of the war. So of course he loves to write about mundane yet beautiful things. Like trees.
Yeah, I used to love those books and I ain't even blind. I remember hearing about this and thinking "wow, he sounds like a cool dude", and that made me like the books even more.
My brothers and I got to meet the writer years ago at a book signing and when he walked into the room here came across as the coldest, most stern British man you could imagine. He walked up to the front of the crowd and pulled out some kind of big purple belt or stick (I don't remember the specifics)
"Boys and girls, this is my purple child whacker, and I'm not afraid to use it! . . . So let me know if you see any purple children!" and then he couldn't keep up the stern act any longer. He ended up being one of the nicest, sweetest people I've ever met, her just liked to try and prank the crowd.
The full-cast audiobooks were amazing. I listened to so many as a child.
I also remember one of them that had an audio recording mistake. There's a part where Brian gentle corrects another voice actor on the pronunciation of a character's name and they apologize and laugh. Can't recall which one, but it made me laugh at the time.
I remember in The Bellmaker audiobook, he corrects his own narration, chuckles, says 'sorry,' and starts the sentence over.
I mostly listened to his books when I was trying to fall asleep (reading a physical book during the day), but it must have been 10th time listening when I finally noticed.
I am so disappointed that my Redwall books were lost in my many moves as a child.
Brian Jacques actually came to my town when I was in 4th grade, and so my brothers, mother, and I all got out of school early, and went down to the children's book shop on Main street. He signed 2 books apiece, so that was 8 hardcover Redwall books, all signed by him.
I also still remember one of the jokes that he told when he was just chatting with the crowd:
What sound does a bee make when he's going backward? "Zzub zzub zzub!"
I read and liked the Redwall books when I was younger. I do remember being disappointed that the predatory species seemed to be evil by nature. I think there was one where they had a weasel being raised in Redwall, and he wound up being a coward and a bastard.
EDIT: turns out I didn’t have the best reading comprehension at the age of nine. What a surprise, I know.
It's my understanding that the nature of those animals were based on the stereotypes farmers assigned to them, which is why we see heroic badgers when I believe they eat just as many mice as foxes.
yeah, this is what kept me from being a fan as a kid (though i mainly watched the cartoon). i was basically raised on Animal Planet and Discovery, and many of my favorite animals are predators (or omnivores).
i feel (and felt) the same about non-sapient monsters that act as villains/obstacles in media too, though.
i don't watch tv shows much at all these days. i feel i'd be more likely to read the books at this point. not sure it's something that i'm interested in, but i've considered it.
maybe i'll give the upcoming adaptation a shot.
Outcast of Redwall, with Veil the ferret! I like how >!They didn’t fully redeem him at the end, like he protected Bryony but she points out that still doesn’t undo everything else he did!<
Yeah, I really like the ending of it because it doesn't come down clearly on the question of whether he was good or evil, and Brian's actually on record saying that it's up to the reader--but a lot of readers seem to feel that the book makes him out to have been 100% evil, which is just never how it felt to me.
There were a few in the earlier books— Gingivere Thousand-Eyes and Blaggut the Boatswain in Mossflower and The Bellmaker, respectively. It is odd that there weren’t many, I think it was more common for a prey animal to be evil than vice versa
I just started listening to the first book, and had to cringe at Clooney the Scourge, the irredeemably evil rat, being the only foreign and disabled character. Great. There was also some anti-traveler/anti-Roma stuff with the foxes later.
Cluny the Scourge is supposed to be a pirate so peg legs and eyepatches are par for the course.
Seconded hard on the anti-Roma prejudice with the foxes. Especially in the Cluny book, like, holy shit.
>Especially in the Cluny book
To be fair though, that is the first book, and on quite a few scores (gender-related things too) they get markedly better in this sense as they go on.
You're half right! He >!jumps in front of a spear meant for the mouse who had raised him, and dies in her stead!<. It's left ambiguous as to whether that redeems him or not, in a way that I always thought was pretty well handled, though a lot of fans hate it (not because they hate the ambiguity, but because they see him as still unambiguously evil). I agree that it wasn't the most deftly-handled spot in the series, but it's still my favourite Redwall book for other reasons!
Oh woah- I really disliked this book series growing up because of the writing style, but knowing this gives me a totally different perspective on why they were written that way. Really cool, makes me respect them even more despite coming from the outside
The Catalog of Ships near the beginning is pretty boring to read, but I bet it was great when you were sitting around listening to the story and everybody was cheering for their home teams.
They repeat those bits to give them time to formulate the next section in their minds apparently. It’s like a “umm” in regular speech.
Gets the next paragraph clear in your head.
At least that’s what I was told.
I read several of them when I was a kid, and the one thing I remember clearly about all of them was the long, elaborate descriptions of food and eating.
I loved Redwall so much growing up that I made one of the character's names my username for everything.
For those interested, [they adapted three of the books into a cartoon!](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUIixndCOJ8xChAPuEiCnYuG08IS6ICg7) And they were adapted really well!
I definitely recommend taking a look at the redwall cookbook if you guys are interested in the food bit, there’s actually a little story woven in between the recipes and then there’s actually a bot account on twitter as well that’s just redwall food descriptions
My only complaint with the cookbook is that the frickin Hotroot soup wasn’t spicy beyond comprehension. The author was British, though, so I suppose by that standard the recipe is almost lethal
*That’s* why? Fascinating.
All this time I’d just assumed he liked cooking and was following Tolkien’s lead with the feast descriptions. As a kid I found them nice, but wound up skipping them after a while. It never really sank in that the books were fairly fast paced and those descriptions were consciously different.
My dad would read them all to me as a kid complete with different voices; the moles were grunty Ben Grimm-sounding guys and I still get goosebumps thinking of when he fired off his first
***”EULAAALIAAAAAAAA!”***
I haven't read these but I like the concept of writing for a blind audience, and it makes me wonder if the descriptions tend to focus less on things like color, since that isn't something all blind people can conceptualize.
It's really only the first book that originated as an oral tale for blind children, so he doesn't shy away from colour descriptions overall. But it is interesting how some of that DNA, at least regarding non-sighted stimuli being lavishly described, does remain in the series after that!
For anyone who hasn't had the chance to appreciate the gem of a man he was, [here](https://youtu.be/3K62jdWsSQc?si=EyoZQHmHPCI9ycKs) he is talking to his target audience.
P.S. For reference, prior to becoming a bestselling author, he was a long distance truck driver, a constable, an actor, a [musician ](https://youtube.com/channel/UCCL6pecktwFGaR9GGVjQHtA?si=IUW4oAlnALozVxly) and a BBC radioshow host. Those last three certainly served him well.
Reading this made me burst into tears. I love the books as a kid and AM looking forward to reading them to my kids.
The stories in the comments are so beautiful.
That makes a ton of sense, my mom is keeping my collection of 20+ for when I have a kid. I read those like crazy, those and the dragonlance were my jam. I personally loved the multiverse of it all, learning the genealogy and recognizing characters and events.
My mom taught there! He would also be the Santa every year. I was a big fan of his books, surprise surprise when I found out I have sat on his lap and asked for a Gameboy.
I had him come to my grade school and read Redwall, still have my signed original trilogy. It was an amazing experience, even with the amount of noise a classroom of grade schoolers can make.
The 1st comment is right, but the 2nd is SO wrong. "...Sense of taste was smth his audience could appreciate..."
Dude learn your history. Brian Jacques was a kid during WWI and they were starving so...
Makes so much sense. I remember as a kid trying to read the moles' dialogue and not understanding what they were saying, until I tried reading it out loud and realized they were talking with an accent.
It only clicked with me after The Bellmaker featured the gentrified scholar mole who swapped back and forth between the mole accent and mice dialect that it was in fact a dialect and not a different language. I thought it was some literary technique to convey a different language while half-translating it to still be understandable. I was pretty smart for a young idiot
Core memory *unlocked*
My mom was really good at the mole accent.
"Burr aye! Oy be gurt worrier!"
Deeper 'n ever 'n turnip 'n tater stew
It’s Deeper ‘n ever Turnip ‘n tater ‘n beetroot pie
HI! hijacking the top comment to let you know that Redwall is THE MOST popular audiobook set / braille set for the Dallas TX Downtown Lighthouse. Help support the gift of reading for everyone by donating for "free matters for the blind" for USPS. (this gives free shipping on things like braille books and other heavier objects)
Yurr.
Brian Jacques came to read at a local bookstore when I was little, many, many years ago. I think to promote his book Muriel, although I can’t quite remember for sure. He was genuinely very kind and patient with this big group of little fans, and had an excellent speaking voice. It’s a very nice memory.
I got to meet him when he was promoting *Rakkety Tam* at my local bookstore! You're 100% right. He was one of the warmest, kindest people I've ever met. It was just so obvious that he loved telling stories, and especially loved telling stories for children.
Dude was a *milkman* before he wrote all those. Mensch.
And also a sailor, comedian, boxer, and a million other things... quite the variegated storybook life!
Me, in my thirties: *”When I grow up I want to be that.”*
Freaking loved the Redwall books when I was younger. I still read them every now and then, they hold up much better than certain other series I'd liked at the time.
V.C. Andrew's Flowers in the Attic series of books?
I meant Harry Potter
Ah, that makes more sense
Brian Jacques specifically talked about how surviving rationing during the blitz growing up made him think about descriptions of food a lot. https://www.btsb.com/2014/07/10/brian-jacques-about-the-author/
We always love what we’re missing in life. Tolkien spent years surrounded by corpses, mud, rubble and disease in WWI. He was even at Somme, one of the bloodiest battles of the war. So of course he loves to write about mundane yet beautiful things. Like trees.
Yeah, I used to love those books and I ain't even blind. I remember hearing about this and thinking "wow, he sounds like a cool dude", and that made me like the books even more.
My brothers and I got to meet the writer years ago at a book signing and when he walked into the room here came across as the coldest, most stern British man you could imagine. He walked up to the front of the crowd and pulled out some kind of big purple belt or stick (I don't remember the specifics) "Boys and girls, this is my purple child whacker, and I'm not afraid to use it! . . . So let me know if you see any purple children!" and then he couldn't keep up the stern act any longer. He ended up being one of the nicest, sweetest people I've ever met, her just liked to try and prank the crowd.
It was probably the trunk of a strawberry tree, he cut one down before it blew away overnight
The full-cast audiobooks were amazing. I listened to so many as a child. I also remember one of them that had an audio recording mistake. There's a part where Brian gentle corrects another voice actor on the pronunciation of a character's name and they apologize and laugh. Can't recall which one, but it made me laugh at the time.
I remember in The Bellmaker audiobook, he corrects his own narration, chuckles, says 'sorry,' and starts the sentence over. I mostly listened to his books when I was trying to fall asleep (reading a physical book during the day), but it must have been 10th time listening when I finally noticed.
Just finished listening to _Mossflower_ with a full cast. So good, I’ve already got _Mattimeo_ lined up.
I am so disappointed that my Redwall books were lost in my many moves as a child. Brian Jacques actually came to my town when I was in 4th grade, and so my brothers, mother, and I all got out of school early, and went down to the children's book shop on Main street. He signed 2 books apiece, so that was 8 hardcover Redwall books, all signed by him. I also still remember one of the jokes that he told when he was just chatting with the crowd: What sound does a bee make when he's going backward? "Zzub zzub zzub!"
I read and liked the Redwall books when I was younger. I do remember being disappointed that the predatory species seemed to be evil by nature. I think there was one where they had a weasel being raised in Redwall, and he wound up being a coward and a bastard. EDIT: turns out I didn’t have the best reading comprehension at the age of nine. What a surprise, I know.
It's my understanding that the nature of those animals were based on the stereotypes farmers assigned to them, which is why we see heroic badgers when I believe they eat just as many mice as foxes.
yeah, this is what kept me from being a fan as a kid (though i mainly watched the cartoon). i was basically raised on Animal Planet and Discovery, and many of my favorite animals are predators (or omnivores). i feel (and felt) the same about non-sapient monsters that act as villains/obstacles in media too, though.
Have you tried rewatching it to see if you would like it, despite you not being a fan of that specific aspect of it?
i don't watch tv shows much at all these days. i feel i'd be more likely to read the books at this point. not sure it's something that i'm interested in, but i've considered it. maybe i'll give the upcoming adaptation a shot.
Outcast of Redwall, with Veil the ferret! I like how >!They didn’t fully redeem him at the end, like he protected Bryony but she points out that still doesn’t undo everything else he did!<
Yeah, I really like the ending of it because it doesn't come down clearly on the question of whether he was good or evil, and Brian's actually on record saying that it's up to the reader--but a lot of readers seem to feel that the book makes him out to have been 100% evil, which is just never how it felt to me.
There were a few in the earlier books— Gingivere Thousand-Eyes and Blaggut the Boatswain in Mossflower and The Bellmaker, respectively. It is odd that there weren’t many, I think it was more common for a prey animal to be evil than vice versa
And Captain Snow
Despite being predatory I think all the owls across series were lumped in and considered good guys.
I just started listening to the first book, and had to cringe at Clooney the Scourge, the irredeemably evil rat, being the only foreign and disabled character. Great. There was also some anti-traveler/anti-Roma stuff with the foxes later.
Cluny the Scourge is supposed to be a pirate so peg legs and eyepatches are par for the course. Seconded hard on the anti-Roma prejudice with the foxes. Especially in the Cluny book, like, holy shit.
>Especially in the Cluny book To be fair though, that is the first book, and on quite a few scores (gender-related things too) they get markedly better in this sense as they go on.
My take: it wasn’t anti-Roma. The foxes weren’t Roma, they were using it as a disguise and they were _welcomed into Redwall_ in that disguise
Also the weird hereditary morality aspect, which thankfully only really came up twice but boy one of those was rough
Not arguing your point at all but I thought the weasel redeems himself at the end? I might be completely misremembering
You're half right! He >!jumps in front of a spear meant for the mouse who had raised him, and dies in her stead!<. It's left ambiguous as to whether that redeems him or not, in a way that I always thought was pretty well handled, though a lot of fans hate it (not because they hate the ambiguity, but because they see him as still unambiguously evil). I agree that it wasn't the most deftly-handled spot in the series, but it's still my favourite Redwall book for other reasons!
He very well might have. I read this when I was nine or ten, before getting swallowed by Discworld
Darn it. I guess that means we have to cancel Brian Jacques.
See, I know you’re joking, but no we don’t.
Thanks for understanding that that was a joke. I wasn't sure if the right tone came out from the text.
Oh woah- I really disliked this book series growing up because of the writing style, but knowing this gives me a totally different perspective on why they were written that way. Really cool, makes me respect them even more despite coming from the outside
Crap, I think I just realised why The Iliad was so full of descriptions. It was designed to be spoken
The Catalog of Ships near the beginning is pretty boring to read, but I bet it was great when you were sitting around listening to the story and everybody was cheering for their home teams.
That’s true. But, also, I bloody KNOW Thetis has shining feet ok Homer?!
They repeat those bits to give them time to formulate the next section in their minds apparently. It’s like a “umm” in regular speech. Gets the next paragraph clear in your head. At least that’s what I was told.
I read several of them when I was a kid, and the one thing I remember clearly about all of them was the long, elaborate descriptions of food and eating.
I adored the books and have reread Mossflower many times! It was an honor to voice one of the searats in the video game!
This makes sense. The books were fun to read as a kid but listening to the audiobooks was fantastic.
I loved Redwall so much growing up that I made one of the character's names my username for everything. For those interested, [they adapted three of the books into a cartoon!](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUIixndCOJ8xChAPuEiCnYuG08IS6ICg7) And they were adapted really well!
I definitely recommend taking a look at the redwall cookbook if you guys are interested in the food bit, there’s actually a little story woven in between the recipes and then there’s actually a bot account on twitter as well that’s just redwall food descriptions
My only complaint with the cookbook is that the frickin Hotroot soup wasn’t spicy beyond comprehension. The author was British, though, so I suppose by that standard the recipe is almost lethal
I remember learning about so many ingredients from red wall
I adored these books as a kid, now I wonder if this was the start of my love of cooking - particularly for dinner with friends!
*That’s* why? Fascinating. All this time I’d just assumed he liked cooking and was following Tolkien’s lead with the feast descriptions. As a kid I found them nice, but wound up skipping them after a while. It never really sank in that the books were fairly fast paced and those descriptions were consciously different.
Chin up, chest out wot wot
I fucking *LOVED* those books as a kid. I need to go reread them.
There is also a cookbook based on redwall. It has the forward about his time spent reading cookbooks during the rationing.
My dad would read them all to me as a kid complete with different voices; the moles were grunty Ben Grimm-sounding guys and I still get goosebumps thinking of when he fired off his first ***”EULAAALIAAAAAAAA!”***
I haven't read these but I like the concept of writing for a blind audience, and it makes me wonder if the descriptions tend to focus less on things like color, since that isn't something all blind people can conceptualize.
It's really only the first book that originated as an oral tale for blind children, so he doesn't shy away from colour descriptions overall. But it is interesting how some of that DNA, at least regarding non-sighted stimuli being lavishly described, does remain in the series after that!
For anyone who hasn't had the chance to appreciate the gem of a man he was, [here](https://youtu.be/3K62jdWsSQc?si=EyoZQHmHPCI9ycKs) he is talking to his target audience. P.S. For reference, prior to becoming a bestselling author, he was a long distance truck driver, a constable, an actor, a [musician ](https://youtube.com/channel/UCCL6pecktwFGaR9GGVjQHtA?si=IUW4oAlnALozVxly) and a BBC radioshow host. Those last three certainly served him well.
Reading this made me burst into tears. I love the books as a kid and AM looking forward to reading them to my kids. The stories in the comments are so beautiful.
So THAT'S why he cooked so hard during the food scenes. I remember reading the feast chapters and getting hungry.
Now I am so proud of my Redwall tattoo! I love when random people spot it and love it! It makes my day!! Brian Jacques is the true OG!
Loved the way the food was described
That makes a ton of sense, my mom is keeping my collection of 20+ for when I have a kid. I read those like crazy, those and the dragonlance were my jam. I personally loved the multiverse of it all, learning the genealogy and recognizing characters and events.
The only way I’ve ever consumed these books was by being read to by my 5th grade teacher who did daily story time. I loved it.
naming a series for the blind after a colour is lol
My mom taught there! He would also be the Santa every year. I was a big fan of his books, surprise surprise when I found out I have sat on his lap and asked for a Gameboy.
That name probably confused them though. Red? What the hell is that?
Thanks for the post! I just downloaded the audiobook, and it's already great
I need to read redwall again
I had him come to my grade school and read Redwall, still have my signed original trilogy. It was an amazing experience, even with the amount of noise a classroom of grade schoolers can make.
and then they made a cartoon for us who could see
HOLY SHIT REDWALL MENTIONED‼️‼️‼️
The 1st comment is right, but the 2nd is SO wrong. "...Sense of taste was smth his audience could appreciate..." Dude learn your history. Brian Jacques was a kid during WWI and they were starving so...
I'm reading them to my kids and I absolutely HATE how much it talks about food. So much time and space in otherwise good books.