I decided to dig a bit into my childhood for a good starting point. When I was still in elementary school (for the life of me I couldn't tell you what grade, but fifth-grade or earlier for sure) I started reading books in the Redwall series.
Originally I came across a cartoon on PBS that featured some of the narratives from the Redwall books. My mom recognized the series for what it was, and informed me that my brother, John, had a collection of some of the books. I borrowed a few and started reading, and thus began my first experience as a fan/geek.
The series, written by Brian Jacques, began with the novel Redwall in the 80s. Jacques kept writing until he died, only a few years ago. In total there are more than 20 books in the Redwall series. I haven't read all of them, but I can confidently say that have read most of them. I don't have any reason not to have finished reading them, but at some point I became less enchanted in reading new stories about anthropomorphized animals (mainly rodents) in a quasi-medieval world. I love the ones that I have read, and I always will, but I haven't made myself finish the series. Maybe I will someday. Maybe I'll finish by reading them to my kids at some point.
This description probably doesn't do justice to the impact that this series had on my younger self. I'll probably revisit specific books in greater detail as I develop my patterns for this blog and as my writer's voice becomes better at longer stretches of activity.
This description probably doesn't do justice to the impact that this series had on my younger self. I'll probably revisit specific books in greater detail as I develop my patterns for this blog and as my writer's voice becomes better at longer stretches of activity.
