Fiction
By: Max Breitenbach
If any one book series has had a major impact on my life, it is the "Redwall" series by Brian Jacques. I first picked up the series in elementary school. Word of the books had been spreading through my 3rd-grade highly capable class and so I decided to go with Mattimeo, the third book in the series, for a book report assignment. At 400-odd pages, like most of the Redwall books, Mattimeo was a daunting challenge for a young reader who had previously stuck with shorter novels like Frindle, by Andrew Clements, and Bunnicula, by James and Deborah Howe.
After the first few pages, I was a Redwall fan. I had never read a book before that brought characters to life so vividly—characters like the fearsome badger Orlando the Axe, the cruel fox Slagar (the Cruel), and the heroic warrior mouse Matthias. Each of these characters had a distinct personality that I could relate to. I imagined myself right there with Matthias and the others, fighting an epic battle to bring back the kidnapped children of Redwall Abbey or with Constance the bander, fending off General Ironbeak the raven in his attempts to seize the Abbey.
Jacques had managed to blend a medieval setting with anthropomorphic animals—two subjects with great appeal for me and many of my classmates. What kid wouldn't want to read about the military prowess of a hare with a British accent? It was like Jacques had combined the Berenstain Bears and Lord of the Rings, while still managing to keep his books accessible to all age groups.
Add to that combination the New York Times' Wednesday food section and you might get an idea of the kind of imagery Jacques used in his descriptions of Redwall feasts. For many years now, I have longed to taste the strawberry cordial, the hotroot soup, and the candied chestnuts that Jacques wrote of so vividly. It was in the "Redwall" series that I first discovered the joy in reading about food, a joy that has developed into something of a hobby for me.
Just recently, I picked up Mattimeo again, for the first time in seven years. I hadn’t had much luck in rereading other childhood classics. The 'His Dark Materials" and "The Seventh Tower" series both seemed to lose their impact with age. But reading Mattimeo as a high school senior was no different than reading it as an elementary school third-grader. It resonated with me every bit as strongly as it had back then. It was like finding long-lost friends. But these friends had never left me. The characters in Brian Jacques’ "Redwall" series had lived on in my imagination all those years.