By Solomon Howard, St. Petersburg High

A Liverpudlian named Brian Jacques changed my life. From the time I was a child I knew him well, and he knew me well. I never met him, wrote to him, or talked to him, but we were best friends all the same. He inspired me and taught me, and instilled in me a love for reading that has only grown stronger over time. He died a year ago, on Feb. 5, 2011 at age 71, and I’m still mourning his loss.

At different times  he was a comedian, radio host, poet, policeman, truck driver and sailor, but he is best known as author. His most popular work, the Redwall series, began in 1983. The idea for the original novel came to him when he was reading to children at the Royal Wavertree School for the Blind (an institution he continued to support). “And do you know something?” he said at a 2008 book signing, “I didn’t like the books I was reading to those kids! … Why? They were all about the modern age, about technology, the march of progress, teenage angst, bah! I said 'What happened to the magic?’ … So I went away and I wrote my own magic. I wrote Redwall.”

Redwall, the first in the series, was published in 1986 after Jacques’ former English teacher showed the manuscript to a publisher from Hutchinson Children’s Books Ltd., and 21 more books in the series followed, the last of which is The Rogue Crew, published in 2011. I own 20 of those 22, and have read each of them at least five times.

When I was 6 years old, my dad read Martin the Warrior to me. It is still one of my favorite books. It tells the story of one brave mouse fighting with his friends to overthrow the tyrannical stoat who enslaved him.

Part of Jacques’ singular style is incredible visual imagery,   inspired by that first audience of blind children. “You can become an author if you learn to paint pictures with words,” he said. “That’s all I do.”

The lessons and images I gained from that series were as formative to me as those I learned from my parents and teachers.

They taught me the value of courage, and gave me the sense that through cooperation and perseverance nearly anything is possible.

They taught me how to deal with loss; in Martin the Warrior one of the main characters dies at the end; something that rarely happens even in books I read today. I think it was by reading that book that I really understood the concept of death for the first time.

They introduced me to battle and swordplay. Fencing is now a large part of my life, my favorite sport.

They got me interested in reading and writing. I still consider a career as an author, and hope to start my first book soon.

Finally, and most important, they stimulated my imagination like nothing else. Jacques himself said, “Every author needs to have a very, very good imagination. God gave us all an imagination. … What a precious and wonderful gift.” I would credit mine to many people, among them certainly Brian Jacques.