Book Talk Selection: Redwall by Brian Jacques

Redwall

By Brian Jacques

Presented by Ryan Pearson

Description of Text:

A young mouse named Matthias lives in the peaceful Abbey of Redwall, inhabited by several other creatures ranging from squirrels to badgers. The Abbey is a place of peace for any creature seeking refuge. However, peace doesn’t last forever when the rat known as Cluny the Scourge arrives seeking to take Redwall Abbey as his own personal castle. Matthias, determined to fend off Cluny from taking Redwall, takes it upon himself to search out the mythical sword of the legendary Martin the Warrior. Matthias must follow a trail of clues left behind by Martin in order to find the sword. His adventure leads him to meet new friends outside of Redwall including a hare, a tribe of war shrews, and an owl. After consulting the owl (a friend of the hare) of the whereabouts of the adder Asmodeus (who stole the sword of Martin), Matthias seeks out the adder. Matthias finds the sword, which he then uses to slay the adder and rushes back to Redwall with his shrew friends. The books ends in a final battle and Matthias defeats Cluny by cutting the ropes of the giant tower bell which then falls onto the rat.

Rationale:

I chose this book because it was one of the first books I actually enjoyed reading as a kid. The first time I read this book was in elementary school around 5-6^th grade but it was difficult for me. The reason why I liked this book is it is full of adventure and mystery in finding the sword of Martin. The text is more appropriate for Middle school kids as the grade level equivalent of it is 7.8 and the Lexile measure is 800. While the writing of the book is pretty straight forward there are some more graphic parts that include violence and death. The book is also  over 300 pages long of fairly small text so I would see this used more in the 8^th grade level.

Teaching Ideas:

1.      Analyzing which creatures are depicted as being good and which are depicted as being bad. How do the qualities of the animals carry over into their character?

2.      The book also has grand feasts in it and descriptions of some pretty delicious food. There is also a Redwall Cookbook that can be purchased online. I think it would be cool to do a “Redwall Feast” to end the book with the class in which they could take on the role of a species or character and eat the food that is described in the book.

3.      There are also instances of riddles in poem form in the book written by creatures. The students could write their own riddles to be shared at the “Redwall Feast”. They could even turn their poetry into a song to be sung.

Obstacles:

There are some gruesome parts in the book such as someone being stabbed multiple times and being left in the ditch to die. Another is Cluny’s soldiers being scalded to death with boiling water when Redwall pours it into a tunnel Cluny’s men created trying to dig their way into the Abbey. Also some creatures’ speech is spelled phonetically to capture their dialect and some creatures speech isn’t proper English, which may be sometimes hard to read for some.