The Racism in the Redwall Books Sure Is Fascinating

Visiting a beloved children's franchise late in life has been a trip Sometime around last summer I started reading the Redwall books with my kids; I've known a lot of people who'd read them growing up or for whom those books meant a lot but they'd missed me entirely until the year of our Abbot 2025 and so I'm coming at this from a probably more critical lens than the one expected of the target audience from the 90's but man, These mice sure are fucking racist lmao Everything I've got to say here will try to be spoiler free for the franchise, but also keeping in mind I'm only up to the 9th book (Pearls of Lutra, 1996) so there could be additional context I'm missing going forward. Also I'm using the term 'racist' in terms of in-universe xenophobia toward different species but also the real-world analogs of how some of the species are written If you, like me, have somehow missed out on this franchise - the premise of the first book is pretty straightforward; low fantasy Europe where…