Literary Un-curriculum or....Redwaaaaaalllllllll!!!!!!

Martin the Warrior - painting by Chris Baker

Martin the Warrior The un-curriculum around our house a few years ago (besides baseball...did I mention baseball?) was the Redwall series of books by Brian Jacques.

We read these books because the kids liked them, and they became curriculum after the fact (like all of our curriculum) because we don't use curriculum per se, and anything that is consuming becomes curriculum (Author clears throat and promises not to use the "c" word anymore)

Redwall and Mossflower Wood creatures spend a lot of time including their young in their lives in all ways, care and nurture each other, share their space with a variety of creatures who, without denying their differences manage to focus on getting along and help each to find ways to function within their society in ways best suited and most satisfying to each. Female characters are on equal footing with the males, and young and old alike are taken very seriously.

The characters are well developed and individualistic, and Jacques has a wonderful, dry sense of humour.

There does seem to be some sort of battle going on most of the time, and I found it getting tedious for me from time to time, however, there is enough other stuff going on, and the books are well wnough written that I found that I was reluctant to put them down as Neal was.

Most of the fighting is of the last resort type. The voles, moles, mice, squirrels, shrews, otters, and badgers along with occasional birds and one odd-ball cat (vegetarian?) will join forces and fight back when atacked by the evil rats, weasles, stoats, foxes and other "vermin" who attempt to destroy or enslave them.

Unfortunately they are always being threatened by something. But while the aggressors in the books use brute force and pointless violence, the Redwall creatures use their heads and cunning along with force when they have to. These are live and let live creatures, and while not of the "an eye for an eye" school, they are not of the "turn the other cheek and let somebody wipe us all out wholesale without a whimper" school either.

In our family, Neal and I took turns reading these stories aloud, and several other homelearners weere heavily into reading and "playing" Redwall as well. The creation of costumes and props was a treat to watch. Neal discovered that silver duct tape is an extremely useful tool but also looks quite metalic on daggers and swords and armour.

In order to make the props look authentic, there was a considerable amount of research about armour, broadswords, foils, lances, bows and arrows, not to mention catapults of various kinds. Do you know about ballistas? They are fascinating. Constucting working models of such things requires playing around with various principles of physics and engineering .

Researching the historical background of the development, purpose and alternative uses of these weapons includes a lot of general information about medievel times such things were used, as well as about the people who used them.

The Society for Creative Anachronism was suddenly very interesting. The kids started taking us out to watch folks wandering around in period costumes and armour. They asked a lot of questions about the weapons and how they were made, watched mock battles and learned about how swordfighting became ritualized for contest purposes etc.

Neal and another friend began fencing as a result of their interest in these books. Both are still fencing four years later. What started out as part of their 10 year old fantasies has become a serious sport for them.

One of the boys and his father were attempting to build a small forge in their back yard at one point. I don't know how successful this was, but I thought it was exciting that they would try.

Neal drew diagrams and plans to build a model of Salamandastron (fire breathing mountain) and investigated ways to make it possible to actaully use fire and smoke safely. He decided that potting clay would be suitable for lining the thing, and was experimenting with ways to make sure there would be enough oxygen to allow the fire to keep breathing as long as there was fuel without the ventilation holes being conspicuous. He did some reading about real (as opposed to fictional) volcanos, and absorbed some geological facts in the process. ("MOMMM...it's not called "lava" until the volcano has spewed it - you call it "magma" while it's still in the mountain")

When Redwall creatures are not engaged in some battle or other, they are having great feasts and festivals and eating all sorts of neat things. Neal's friend Max and his mother, Joan produced a Redwall Cookbook from which our kids prepared "authentic" Redwall recipes such as "Deeper'n ever "Tatter, Turnip and Beetroot Poi" ( a favourite of the moles - actually it's delicious). We even made candied chestnuts, and though they were tasty, we decided they weren't worth the amount of work involved.

Several of the kids had Redwall theme birthday parties involving singing songs from the books, feasting, dressing as characters and having "jousts". Neal composed a piece on the piano inspired by the books, called Martin's Reel. He worked on writing voices for several instruments for it with his music teacher, and they recorded it with several parts played on a synthesizer. When the author was in town for a book launch, the kids donned costumes and made banners and Neal presented a tape of the orchestrated Martin's Reel to Mr. Jacques. Neal also wrote a book review of Redwall in verse for a poetry theme day.

The kids hit the nature books to find out just exactly what the difference is between a stoat and a weasle. There was a lot of discussion about relative size and distance from the perspective of the small creatures. How small would a stream have to be in real life in order for it to be possible to damn it by anchoring a sailing vessel sailed by shrews, mice, moles, a dadger and hares be? How big would the ship have to be to hold all these animals and still be manageable? These were interesting side conversations, but any incongruities mattered not at all to the flow of the story :-)

The moles speak in a dialect which I thought was somewhat like a thick Yorkshire accent, and there are north country falcons, and an eagle in "Salamandastron" which has a thick Scottish brogue. We looked up various areas of the British Isles on the map and tried to match the creatures with the areas where such accents would be found . We really couldn't decide about the moles, so Neal used the computer and wrote a letter to Brian Jacques - might as well go right to the source. He asked several other questions and after several months received a nice letter back with specific answers to specific questions (the mole dialect is based on that of "The Old Men of Cornwall"). I just love the confidence of 10 year old homeschoolers. It didn't occur to him for a minute that Mr. Jacques wouldn't have time for his questions, and of course he was right.

Again, as with baseball, there has been a lot of real but incidental learning happening as a part of being immersed in Redwall. There was some sociology, history, research, correspondence, music, food preparation, arts and crafts, sports, sewing...etc.

We probably couldn't have planned any of this , but it's exciting to watch the depths to which kids will delve into things that they are really interested in.