PS While I was double-checking my spelling of the character names I discovered that there is an actual cartoon of this book series. To say that I am shocked would be putting it mildly. That one is not going on my watch list. 

What I'm Currently Reading: When the Children Came Home: Stories From Wartime by Julie Summers

Mariel of Redwall by Brian Jacques is the fourth book in the Redwall series.

All I can say is this series is so much fun to read. I highly recommend it. 

This book is like Ender's Game in that it's very good and I enjoyed reading it a lot but if I ever recommend it to anyone I'll feel really bad. 

I wasn't excited about reading Redwall. Animal fantasies aren't my thing really, especially this type of historical-ish fantasy. But once I started reading, it was good, the characters and the story drew me in. There are some pretty good female characters too which I wasn't expecting. 

However, there is some British racism throughout the book, hence why I don't recommend anyone else read it. Jacques uses the term g***y a few times and the term raghead once. The way that the Sparrows speak is reminiscent of stereotypical "Indians" from Hollywood (not a good look) [link to come when I'm not at work]. The animals living outside the abbey are generally portrayed as simple and/or savage. There's just lots of casual stereotypes and racial slurs sprinkled throughout the book that made parts difficult to read (literally in the case of the Sparrows' speech). 

This is the first in the series, so Jacques might get better as the books go along. I'm not planning on reading any more, so I guess I'll never know. I really hope they do though since parts of the series are really great. 

ETA: This was from NPR's Ultimate Backseat Bookshelf list. I'm reading The Birchbark House next to make myself feel better 

I got this for $1 at the Metro Library Book Sale. I had no idea they ever made a graphic novel of Redwall, so I was excited. But given how thin the book was I had my worries. And it turned out to be what I feared. They condensed this far too much. Numerous characters were glossed over or left out. They didn't even mention otters, who are major creatures in Mossflower. Moles, especially Foremole, was only seen on one page. Some dialogue was hard to understand, and some panels were convoluted. This really needed to be at least 50 pages longer to fully flesh out any Redwall tale. We even cut the ending rather short so you didn't even have time to fully grieve for those lost in the final battle. Just a neat bow on things. 

Well, this month was going to be April Showers, so it was supposed to be dedicated to sad and emotional books. But then we had the Great Bedroom Flood of 2018, which ruined SOOOOOO MANY of my books. The bottoms of most of my graphic novels and several unread novels were soaked, causing the pages to warp, discolor and stick together. I wasn't too upset about the ones I had already read, but some of these books were brand new or just purchased at the Metro Book Sale. 

So, now April Showers means floods and water in the literal sense. I'm going to read the few books I salvaged that needed reading. Hopefully the pages aren't too stuck together. 

Before I read these I swear I will get through Envy and Splendor. I SWEAR. 

Also, Oklahoma teachers on strike. And I am behind them all the way. Teachers need better pay and our schools need more money! Oklahoma ranks 49th in the country in education. 

P.S. Friday was a terrible day. Saturday wasn't. Sunday was even better. Hope you guys are having a pretty good go of things.