Brian Jacques

At 71 years old, Brian Jacques has this physical status:

In "Jakes," James Brian Jacques (Jakes) was an English writer known for his Redwall series of novels and Castaways of the Flying Dutchman series from 1939 to 2011.

In addition, he wrote two collections of short stories titled The Ribbajack & Other Curious Yarns and Seven Strange and Ghostly Tales.

Early years

Brian Jacques was born in Liverpool on June 15th, 1939. James Alfred Jacques, a haulage specialist, and Ellen Ryan were among his parents.

Jacques grew up in Kirkdale, close to the Liverpool Docks. Since his father and a brother were also named James, he was identified by his middle name, Brian. His father loved literature and read his boys adventure books by Daniel Defoe, Sir Thomas Mallory, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Edgar Rice Burroughs, but also The Wind in the Willows with its cast of animals. Jacques demonstrated early writing skills. He wrote about a creature that was supposed to write an animal tale at age ten. His teacher could not believe that a ten-year-old wrote it, and the boy was suspended for refusing to copy the tale. He had always loved to write, but only now did he realize the depth of his abilities. He attended St John's School until age 15, when he dropped training (as was normal at the time) and set out on a quest for freedom as a merchant sailor. His book Redwall was written for his "unique friends," the children of the Royal Wavertree School for the Blind, whom he first encountered while working as a milkman. He began to spend time with the children, reading books to them. However, he became dissatisfied with children's literature, with too much adolescent angst and not enough magic, and he began to write stories about them. He is known for his descriptive style of his books, which emphasize sound, smell, sensation, balance, temperature, touch, and kinesthetics, rather than purely visual sensations.

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Career

Alan Durband, his former English tutor (who also coached The Beatles: Paul McCartney and George Harrison), showed it to his (Durband) own publisher without telling Jacques. "This is the best children's book I've ever read," Durband told his publishers: "You'd be foolish not to publish it." Jacques was summoned to London shortly after being offered a long-term contract to write the next five books in the series.

Redwall was an 800-page handwritten manuscript. Although it is now normal for children's books to have 350 pages, Harry Potter's books far exceed that, in those days 200 was considered the minimum that would hold a child's interest. It set the tone for the entire story, with peaceful mice, badgers, voles, hares, moles, and squirrels defeating rats, molets, snakes, and stoats. He did not shy away from combat, and many of the "good" animals die. For example, Redwall depicts the encompassing human race, as shown by a scene featuring a horse-drawn cart. Humans are largely dismissed in these books, portraying an Iron Age society from the misty's beginnings, bridges, and ships to the size of forest creatures, writing their own books, and drawing their own maps. Jacques was very involved in the recording of his career, even enlisting his sons and others to address the Redwall inhabitants. Jacques said that the characters in his stories are based on people he had met. When he was a young boy hanging around the docks of Liverpool, he based Gonff, the self-proclaimed "Prince of Mousethieves" himself. Mariel is based on her granddaughter. Constance the Badgermum is based on his maternal grandmother's conjecture. Other characters are a mash-up of several of the people he has encountered in his travels.

When he fantasized about the dishes in his aunt's illustrated Victorian cookbook, Jacques remembered well the rationing during and after the war. The groaning boards are popular scenes in his tales, which are described in delectable detail. In addition, the war gave him gruesome battles' depictions. Jacques was known to favor old-fashioned methods; he always preferred an old typewriter as being more reliable than a computer; and although he allowed an animated television show to be produced that answered kids's questions after the cartoon ended, he was a fan of videogames and other emerging technologies. The Teletoon airings had no such restrictions. He never felt that he matched the image of a "writer" sitting in his garden. Nonetheless, his happiness at reaching children had been deeply touched. He was also delighted to be acknowledged by the people of Liverpool. His books have been published in twenty-eight languages around the world and have sold more than twenty million copies.

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