Readwall Episode 1: Introduction to Redwall

Eulalia!

Eulalia, and welcome!

Eulalia!

Oh, we are your faithful critters of Mossflower Wood. One of the hares has just delivered us some tea. I guess they don't have human-sized cups, but thank you.

Very delicious.

We are glad that you're joining us today. I'm Paul.

I'm Amy.

And this is Readwall. This is a Readwall read-along podcast where we're going to be enjoying the classic Brian Jacques story together. Some of the area of the wood can get pretty confusing and dangerous, so I'm going to be your guide, having read the book a few times now, but this is your first read of the book. Yes. So we're not going to be giving anything away in our episodes beyond what we've read. And today, since today's our introduction, we're not going to give anything away. So feel safe to join. And without any spoilers so that we can enjoy this together.

So whether you've read it a few times or are interested in the novel, you are welcome here.

This is also, I think, a great read for the little ones. This is targeted, from what I'm reading online, most people agree, like 8 and above. And so if you're joining us as a family, very special welcome to you in particular. You are on a wonderful adventure together. That makes this all the better for everyone. So thank you. Like I said, we're going to be— this is going to be a little bit of an introduction to the book. And I think a lot of this is stuff that— well, I mean, you haven't read the book, but a lot of this might be stuff that you're not going to know. We are going to have a little bit of homework for everybody at the end. It's good homework, don't worry. We're going to give the first assignment out for For the next episode of what we need to read so that we can all gather back together. This is the beautiful thing about this. This is a podcast. Now, so if you get a little bit behind on the reading, the reading is going to be fairly short for each stream. But if you get a little bit behind, you know what? We'll be here when you're ready. So it's going to be awesome.

I'm the only one that can't lag on the homework.

Right. Yeah, definitely. She has to be up to date. So the reason we wanted to do this is, first of all, I'm going to talk a little bit about this when we talk more about Brian Jacques himself as an author. But I really wanted my kids to experience this book. And so I have read it a few times before that. And I just picked it up and wanted to read it. And I was talking about it with some friends and found out that they hadn't read it. I'm like, okay, we got to fix this. We need to read this all together. And so this is how this started. And you've heard a little bit of our outline, out loud reading, not all of it, but I think you've enjoyed the parts that— Yeah. And so have you ever heard of this series before?

I have never heard of this series before.

Okay.

I love the COVID

Oh, your cover, like I have the old paperback that I bought originally. We got a new cover for you. And Redwall typically has really good covers. And so I really like that painting as well.

I don't know. I think I kind of like yours a little bit better. I'm one of those people, I'll walk into a bookstore and I pick up a book and if I really like the COVID I'm like, okay, I'm going to read this.

That's actually exactly why I read it.

You know, I would have totally, if I had seen that in the bookstore, I would have totally picked it up to read.

I was working in a bookstore and I also had not heard of this series. But I was working in a bookstore and I saw these in the fantasy section. And of course, by then there were a lot, a lot of books in the series. And I very often had to move them or put them up. And I just loved all of the covers. And new ones were coming out and I loved those covers too. So I grabbed one. And this was the 10th anniversary edition of it. And I grabbed it and I just devoured it. started picking up some other ones. I have not read all of the books or even close. I've read several of them though, and I've liked them all. And so I particularly love this book and have come back to it several times. But let's talk about Jakes himself. First of all, it is pronounced Brian Jakes. And so if y'all are during the discussion if for years y'all have been— I had been struggling pronouncing it Jacques or something like that. But it's easier than that. It's just Jakes. But he did write a little bit here and there. He had some other jobs in radio. At the time, he also had a job as a milkman. Now, a lot of you young people aren't going to have the foggiest clue what that is, right? But in the olden days, people would— you would hire a milkman to deliver milk to your door at set intervals. That's awesome. what he did during the week. He, at the time, he was delivering— and let me pull up the name of the school. This is the Royal Wavertree School for the Blind. And he would deliver milk there. This is— it's in Liverpool, in England. And he would deliver milk there. And he, in the process of this, kind of got to know the people there and kind of got to know the kids. And he was like, hey, look, I'd really like to come help and read him some stories. And he did so. And he was dissatisfied with the books that they had available. He was used to, like, these— when he was growing up, these adventure books, Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island, and these grand adventures and, you know, sword fights and humor and such. And He started writing Redwall in an attempt to give them that experience. I mentioned earlier, this is exactly why I wanted to present the kids with this, because you know every time I go into the bookstore, I complain about the books that they have available. Yes. But like the old adventure stuff that were with that were, that just made you go, oh, that's cool, pirate ships and all that, that really appeals to me. I wanted to give to the kids as well. His manuscript, he just had it loose in like a bag from the grocery store that he carried around this place. Someone borrowed it without his— well, I'm sure they had his knowledge in borrowing it, but without his knowledge, sent it to a publisher friend who was like, we would like to give you money for this book. And they did. And so this is how we got Redwall. We're going to see like his approach in writing because he was writing to children and because he was writing to, in particular, Yeah. Blind kids, he really takes care to get into description, like make everything really lush. And he focuses a lot on sounds and smells as well as the way things look. And it is because of that audience. So we're going to— that's how Redwall came to be. It was— I have the 10th anniversary edition. I think we've closed in on 40 years of Redwall by now. Dates me a little bit, but— The way the show is going to work, and we are going to need y'all's help on it. The— we are going to— we are going to take a section of the book every 2 weeks. We are going to come together. We are going to discuss what happened in those sections. We are going to point out any new characters, what they are like, any characters that really stood out in that passage. Also point out our favorite passages from it. I'm going to make an effort to do voices when I read those out loud. Are you going to do some voices?

I will try, as you know.

Are

you

going to leave those to me?

I will try. I tend to forget what I'm saying and transition to a different voice mid-voice.

I'm very good at that.

So we will try. We will try. We'll try and see what we get. Just so you know, on the first homework, you're going to be describing every character you run across because they're all new.

Because they're all new. The next episode is probably going to be a little bit longer than normal. We're going to try to keep it down to a reasonable length every time. There are quite a few characters in Redwall Abbey, and so we're going to mention them kind of briefly. But what we need from y'all is, first of all, is to take a look and read it. You know, that's the first part. Our first selection is going to be in Book 1, which is called The Wall, and it is going to be chapters 1 through 8. I was looking at the wrong thing. So that seems like a lot of chapters. A lot of those chapters are very, very short. What we're going to be looking at is reading about 40 pages every 2 weeks. And so if you're reading with the family and you can get them together twice a week, then, you know, read about 10 pages. And that'll get us through that section. This is going to be something that I would recommend for families to read out loud. First of all, they're fun to read out loud. I think you've noticed I've had fun reading them out loud.

Oh, definitely. And your very many voices too.

Yes. I do the voices when reading with the family as well. This is targeted towards ages 8 and above. What you're going to find though is the prose is different than probably what we're used to. Yeah. Jakes does not— Jakes assumes that the audience can keep up. And so He, his, I don't think his vocabulary is hard, but it is, he uses a lot, a lot of different—

He's English.

He is English, yes. And he's very expressive in the way he writes. There is a lot of humor.

Well, he's writing for blind children.

Yeah.

So, you know, he's got to be expressive, right?

Exactly, yeah. There's a lot of humor. There is a lot of action. And there are some darker parts to it as well that, you know, that as readers, we have to face some parts of it that are really going to be on the edge of our seats of, is somebody going to get out of this? That I— if you do read this with the family, I would very much encourage you to listen to these with the family as well. We're going to keep these episodes rated G because we want this to be a family activity. If you're here by yourself, we'd love to have you too. Just know, as parents, if you do want to make this a family activity, then we're going to work very hard to make that family safe for you. So the first episode's in 2 weeks. Part of the homework, first of all, was just reading the section, but send us your favorite lines. Your reactions to the characters, your reactions to the events, if any questions on them. We're going to have a whole section of the show just for our favorite lines, and we want your favorite lines as well. I think that's going to be a lot of fun to see what people really get into with the book and what they find to be interesting and funny. Since we do have to record this before the episode drops, try to get those in at least a few days before the episode goes, and we'll do our best to snag those and read them out loud. There is going to be an email address in the description. We have not finalized what that email address is as of the recording of this, but You can use that email address to write to us. If, uh, we are a part of, uh, in, uh, the Playwall Network of podcasts, but in particular the Backlog Breakdown. And so if you are on the Backlog Breakdown's Discord, we have put in a special channel for Redwall where we'll also be looking for, um, uh, for favorite lines, favorite quotes, favorite characters, and that, and that sort of things, uh, as well as this discussion. So feel free to— join there, and we'll put all of those links down below. If there's something that you would like to see out of this podcast, something in particular that you would like from us, let us know and we will do our best. But yeah, I think that'll take care of our introductory episode here.

Yeah. I think so.

Absolutely. We'll finish enjoying our tea here.

Cheers.

We do hope that you'll have a great day. We're going to see you in 2 weeks. And until then, happy reading. I think that you're really going to enjoy it. And we will catch up then.

Take care. Bye.