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Redwall was a series that my Dad introduced me to at the young age of eight and I grew to love those bedtime reads with my parents taking it in turns to tell the story with the voices of the characters of course. So this readthrough of the series is one where my heart is in full control because I wanted to go back to the time when I didn't worry about everything and my Dad was still with me fully rather than be lost to the plague that is Alzheimer’s.Brian Jacques (1939-2011) gave the world of children’s literature a masterpiece when he created Redwall, and the following 21 books that were completed before his death. Filled with wonderful characters from the mice who live at Redwall Abbey, and others such as Constance the Badger who lived in the surrounding Mossflower woods? Children would be captivated by the adventures that surrounded these small woodland creatures but Jacques also shone a light on the world we live in and the one he had seen growing up in Liverpool and even in the first book, which I was read at the age eight for the first time - highlighted the circle of life and had one of the main characters die.I think this showed how aware he was of how life and death affects children and how we often shelter them from the harsher realities of living and yet can cause them to be unable to process that circle. Maybe my mind is more focused on that presently as my Dad is extremely ill and I’ve had to prepare my own children? I’m not sure but I do know that Redwall would be my first fictional experience of loss and even now, when I know what will happen because I read the books to my children (yes with the voices too) and recently, I was already starting to cry and sobbing at the end of the book.Redwall is beautiful. A simple statement but accurate,The world-building that a man who was a merchant sailor and then had various jobs based around the ever busy docks of Liverpool is incredible and the lushness of a woodland filled with peaceful mice, badgers, voles, hares, moles and squirrels defeating rats, weasels, ferrets, snakes and stoats comes to life from the page.But it’s not just the visual beauty of the world that draws you into this series but also the characters, many of whom have characteristics that were based on Jacques’s family and friends and no doubt some of the adventures may have had basis in the ones he got up to as a child. We learn as this is the first book, about Redwall and little bits of its heritage from the historian and records-keeper of the Abbey and how there was a warrior mouse once upon a time who would defeat all evil but finally found peace instead when founding Redwall. Young children and a young mouse called Matthias will be in awe of Martin the Warrior and wish for a sword to defeat all that brings harm their way I’m sure. But peace has come to an end with the arrival of a runaway cart filled with evil Cluny the Scourge, a Portuguese bilge rat and his evil followers finding their way into Mossflower during the Summer of the Late Rose, and adventure, survival and new friendships await the little mice of Redwall Abbey,I still love these books, both because I can hear my Dad reading them to me when I turn the page, and because Brian Jacques wrote this book in 1986 and it is still as beautiful, lush in its world-building and draws you into it’s world so well from the first page. These are a legacy not only to the author for me, but for the greatest Father a child could ask for, If you’re a parent and want to read these but voices aren’t your thing - get the audiobooks narrated by Brian Jacques, some of his family and other cast members who ensure you will be captivated too.