Mariel of Redwall (Redwall Series #4)

by Brian Jacques

Overview

New York Times bestselling author Brian Jacques gives us another tale of Redwall, filled with “The Knights of the Round Table with paws” (The Sunday Times) along with their friends and enemies.

Gabool the Wild is the most feared rat ever to sail the high seas. As the pirate king he rules with a quick temper and a swift sword, terrorizing all who cross his path. Joseph the Bellmaker and his daughter, the mousemaid Mariel, are his latest victims. When their ship is attacked by the searats, Gabool takes Joseph’s marvelous bell among the booty, and casts him and his daughter overboard. Washed ashore, and suffering from memory loss, Mariel finds a home at Redwall Abbey. And when she recalls what happened to her and her father, she sets off with three Mossflower companions to confront Gabool—and make him pay for his crimes…

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780441006946
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/01/2000
Series:	Redwall Series
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.72(w) x 10.88(h) x 1.03(d)
Age Range:	10 - 14 Years

About the Author

"I sometimes think it ironic for an ex-seaman, longshoreman, truck driver, policeman, bus driver, etc., to find success writing children's novels," says Brian Jacques (pronounced "Jakes"). Yet it is all too true. With the publication of his first children's book in 1987, the award-winning Redwall, Jacques' fresh talent has received exceptional praise from reviewers in the United States and England. Newbery Award winner Lloyd Alexander called it "a fine work, literate, witty, filled with the excitement of genuine storytelling. Young people will surely be captivated. I hope they give their elders a chance to share the delights."

A well-known radio personality in his native Liverpool—as well as an actor, stand-up comic, and playwright—Brian Jacques is the host of "Jakestown" on BBC Radio Merseyside. Ever the performer, Jacques is well-known for applying his acting and entertainment background to his lively presentations to legions of young fans at schools across the United States and England.

Brian Jacques was born in Liverpool, England on June 15th, 1939. Along with forty percent of the population of Liverpool, his ancestral roots are in Ireland, County Cork to be exact.

He grew up in the area around the Liverpool docks. His interest in adventure stories began at an early age with reading the books of: Daniel Defoe, Sir Henry Rider Haggard, Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Thomas Malory, Robert Michael Ballantyne, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Kenneth Grahame. He attended St. John's School, an inner city school that had its playground on the roof. On his first day at St. John's, at the age of ten, he had an experience that marked his potential as a writer. When given an assignment of writing a story about animals, he wrote about the bird that cleaned a crocodile's teeth. The teacher could not, and would not, believe that a ten year old could write that well. When young Brian refused to falsely say that he had copied the story, he was caned as "a liar". He had always loved to write, but it was only then, that he realized that he had a talent for writing.

Some teachers at St. John's proved to be good role models. As Mr. Jacques recalls:

"My favourite teacher was Mr. Austin Thomas. He looked like Lee Marvin. Big Man. A Captain in World War II. He came to school on a big bush bike with the haversack on back. He was a man's man. Always fair. I was fourteen at the time when Mr. Thomas introduced the class to poetry and Greek literature. (Because of him, I saved seven shillings and sixpence to buy The Iliad and The Odyssey at this dusty used book shop.)"

This interest in poetry extended to Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Goldsmith.It was also at St. John's that Brian met a teacher, Alan Durband (who also taught two Beatles, Paul McCartney and George Harrison), who, more than thirty years later would bring about a major change in his life.

After Brian finished school at fifteen, he set out to find adventure as a merchant seaman. He travelled to many far away ports, including New York, Valparaiso, San Francisco, and Yokohama. Tiring of the lonely life of a sailor, he returned to Liverpool where he worked as a railway fireman, a longshoreman, a long-distance truck driver, a bus driver, a boxer, a bobby (Police Constable 216D), a postmaster, and a stand-up comic.

 

Penguin mourns the passing of celebrated children’s book author Brian Jacques

Date of Birth:

June 15, 1939

Date of Death:

February 5, 2011

Place of Birth:

Liverpool, England

Place of Death:

Liverpool, England

Education:

St. John¿s School, Liverpool, England

Website:

http://www.redwall.org

Editorial Reviews

Praise for the Redwall series
 
“Brian Jacques has the true fantasy writer’s ability to create a wholly new and believable world.” –School Library Journal
 
 “The medieval world of Redwall Abbey—where gallant mouse warriors triumph over evil invaders—has truly become the stuff of legend.” –Seattle Post-Intelligencer
 
 “A grand adventure story. Once the reader is hooked, there is no peace until the final page.” –Chicago Sun-Times
 
 “Jacques’s effortless, fast-paced narrative gets its readers quickly hooked. He clearly loves this other world he has created—there’s a genius sense of involvement and care (lots of lovingly descriptive passages), as well as an overflowing, driving imagination.” –Birmingham Post
 
“Redwall is both an incredible and ingratiating place, one to which readers will doubtless cheerfully return.” –New York Times Book Review
 
 “An excellent adventure with an enlightened conscience. Brilliantly complex. With vibrant and distinct animal characters, Jacques’s classically inspired plot-weaving achieves virtuosity.” –Publishers Weekly
 
 “Only a churl would reject this morality play in fur.” –Kirkus Reviews
 
“Filled with the kind of vibrant storytelling that fans of Jacques have come to expect. His dialogue is lively and delightful to read aloud…so rich in detail that the sights and sounds and smells of the adventure pull the reader in.” –Grand Rapids Press (MI)
 
 “A richly imagined world in which bloody battles vie for attention with copious feasting and tender romancing. Where males and females are hero's and warriors. Where the young triumph and the old endure. Where intelligence is as valued as strength and wit is frequently more important than size…[Jacques] continues to surprise and delight with intriguing plots and fresh faces.” –Cincinnati Enquirer
 
 “The Knights of the Round Table with paws.” –The Sunday Times (London)

From the Publisher

A female protagonist, Mariel the mousemaid, lends a contemporary touch to the fourth installment in the Redwall series. Ages 10-up. (Mar.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

A female protagonist, Mariel the mousemaid, lends a contemporary touch to the fourth installment in Jacques's Redwall series, which narrates epic events among the animals in the manner of Watership Down. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Gr 4-8-- Redwall Abbey is once again the center of a multistranded adventure. Independent of its predecessors, Redwall (1987), Mossflower (1988), and Mattimeo (1990, all Philomel), it follows the mousemaid Mariel in her quest for vengeance against the searat Gabool the Wild and his Rodent Corsairs, who imprisoned her father and left her to drown during a storm at sea. Tough and resiliant, she makes her way to Redwall, where she finds stalwart companions who will accompany her through the Mossflower woods back to Gabool's stronghold, where he is descending into madness. Meanwhile, the good creatures of Redwall are besieged by a renegade band of searats. Intrepid readers willing to tackle a book this long will be further impeded by the sections of dialect used to delineate class structure. Since the writing style is cliched, much of the action contrived to be cute, the characters one-dimensional, and the villains predictable vermin, readers may wonder ``why bother?'' Nor will they find illumination of human-animal kinship. Clever substitutions like ``anybeast,'' ``foremole,'' and ``every ratjack of ye'' serve only to remind that these animals are almost entirely human surrogates. Even the frequent references to woodland cuisine are tedious enough to become unappetizing. A book that's somewhat pretentious, and one that will appeal mainly to fans of Jacques's earlier medieval fantasies. --Margaret A. Chang, North Adams State College, MA

School Library Journal