In Memoriam

Some sad news to pass along:  One of my favorite fantasy writers, British author Brian Jacques (b.June 15, 1939), died on February 5, 2011 following emergency surgery for an aortic aneurysm. His young adult novels were a source of enjoyment to our whole family. The 22nd book in his Redwall series comes out in May and will probably join the 15 or so of his titles we have kept on the bookshelves downstairs.  If you have children and they have not read the series, I would recommend it wholeheartedly.  They make great read-aloud books, too.


 From his obituary in The Los Angeles Times:

As a milk deliveryman in his 40s in Liverpool, England, he was invited in for tea at one of his stops, the Royal Wavertree School for the Blind, and soon volunteered to read stories to the children there. 

He found the plots "dreadful," preoccupied with the "here and now" of teen angst and divorce. "I thought, 'What's wrong with a little magic in their lives?'" he told the New York Times in 2001.

It took Jacques — pronounced "Jakes" — seven months to hand-write an 800-page manuscript. He stuffed the pages into a grocery bag and handed them to his former English teacher, who shopped the novel around without Jacques' knowledge.

In 1986, a British publisher bought "Redwall" for a little more than $4,000 and gave him a contract for four more books. One of the most popular contemporary fantasy series had been born.

The good guys — including mice, badgers and squirrels — always vanquish such villains as ferrets, snakes and weasels. The books brim with riddles, battles and descriptions of lavish feasts, a fascination that Jacques linked to the food rationing he endured as a child during World War II.

"Today we take a 350-page fantasy as sort of the norm; but when 'Redwall' came out, conventional wisdom was that children would not read a book over 200 pages," said Anita Silvey, a children's literary scholar who included the series in her 2004 compendium "100 Best Books for Children."

"There is no one even remotely like him. There is a lot of dialect in those books, and his voice is authentic," Silvey said. "His books are filled with cliffhangers and action and great battle scenes, all of those things that keep a young person turning the pages."

In his honor, one more cry of "Eulalia", the battle cry of the badgers and hares. He will be missed.