• Ie ro or Brian Jacques hits one over the Redwall with 'Legend of luke' Long before the Harry Potter books became best-eeUera, there was the immensely successful Redwa1laeriea .</p><p> Since 1986, burly Liverpool native Brian Jacques has been spinning his tale. of Redwall, a medieval world where woodland creatures like mice and rabbits and moles live together, fight off attack.a trom evil foxes and rats, and use any excuse to break into • song and stage e I.borate feuta.</p><p> Hia latest -'"The Legend of Luke" -Is a rip-roaring adventure of pirates and derring-ilo.</p><p> And this 12th By MICHAEL GILTZ installment in the series is bound to add to Jacques' popularity .</p><p> Already he hosts his own radio show; has a Web site, created by a young fan (www.redwall.org), that gets about 2 miUion hits a year, and counts Prime Minister Tony Blair and his family among his fans.</p><p> There's even an animated "Redwall" TV show - a 13- part series that will probably be picked up by PBS -and a movie is in the works.</p><p> Published in 19 countries and in 16 languages, the "Red wall" books are an international phenomenon .</p><p> Here, the last two entries hit the best· seller lists.</p><p> Since Jacques turns out the books like clockwork , it's become an annual tradition for him to tour the States for about six weeks every winter.</p><p> It's something the 60-year-old writer takes pleasure in .</p><p> This creator of a mythical world says it's the United States he finds most magical. "When I was a kid during the back end of the war -when everything was devastation and hunger and rationing in our country -the only magic place you could go to was the cinema," Jacques recently told The Post. '"There you saw this wonder of 11 place called America where everybody had big cars and iceboxes and swimming pools." In the hardscrabble time of his youth, even imagination was rationed out. "I was never encourag ed in anything." claims Jacques, who says n "Everything can't be singing teapots, can It?" Jokes Brian Jacques of his sometimes violent children's books. teacher once caned him in school for turning in a short story that was considered too good.</p><p> The teacher was convinced the boy must have plagiarized it.</p><p> Jacques later dropped out of school at 15, joined the merchant marines, then headed back to land where he worked on the docks, drove a bus, sang in a folk group, did stand-up comedy, boxed, even read stories aloud to children at the Royal School for the Blind.</p><p> Unhappy with the books that were available then, Jacques penned his own.</p><p> A I friend took his first novel and -without Jacques' know Ilodge -showed it to a publisher .</p><p> The Redwall series was off and running.</p><p> Though good always triumphs over evil in Redwall, the dangers are real and the violence that flares up has consequence •.</p><p> In "The Legend of Luke." for example, one major characters wife is killed, there's a slaughter of innocent people, and good creatures defend themselves by ambushing a group of pirates and killing the lot of them. "Everything can't be singing teapot~. cnn it?" jokes Jacques.</p><p> Nor can everythi ng be Redwall. "I love Redwall and the publishers and kid~ want more Redwall.</p><p> So I said I'll write one Redwall a vear, but I want to do other books, too." And the upcoming 'Castaways of 'The Flying Dutchman!" will mark his fir.t non Redwall novel. "I wrote it la<t vear and I wrote it indoors: actually," soys Jacques, who's famous for spending rach summer in his backyard , working on the next Redwoll book. "I'm very, very ple3~d with it." Judging from the reception Accorded his Redwall books, "Dutchman" may Slli! right to the top of the best-seller lists.
