Redwall Collectors Community: Ukrainian Mossflower

Contributed by LordTBT at 8:38PM GMT, 03 October 2025

Мохоцвітна країна front cover — *Мохоцвітна країна* front cover

Last year, Ukrainian publisher Nebo BookLab released a new translation of Redwall, Редволл. In that review, we teased that the translation of Mossflower by Brian Jacques, Мохоцвітна країна (Браян Жак), would be next, and it's finally here! Just like the Ukrainian Redwall paperback, Maria Kolosova absolutely delivered with the cover artwork and several full-page illustrations. It's a hefty 524-page book.

Translated by Maria Rudenko, she discussed her process with Nebo, which we have translated to English:
"For me, in working with children's literature, translating the names of the characters was an incredible challenge. In such a book, almost every name was given to the heroes for a reason, and they have a certain meaning for the plot of the story. Each name included a description of the character: whether it was his appearance (green-eyed Verdauga, brown-striped), or his rank (Skipper), or other character traits, and not always the traditional transliteration that we use when translating names or names from other languages, will do here."

"The transfer of the name simply will not describe the character as vividly as it was in the original, and a Ukrainian reader, especially a small one, will not be able to understand what makes this hero stand out (for comparison: Ashleg or Yaseneva Noga. The second option is more understandable for a Ukrainian reader, and he will be able to visually imagine this hero). Riddles are a special feature of such adventure novels, but when the riddles are written in poetic form, it is a headache for the translator. I'll be honest, translating any poem is a difficult job for me, but if an ordinary song or poem can somehow be paraphrased, slightly change the form, words so that they rhyme, then when you get a riddle or a map encrypted in a poem here the adventure for the translator begins."

"The characters follow the instructions of this poem or song, it is their compass in the adventure, however, if the Ukrainian text has to be changed, then there is a misunderstanding between this poem and how the events unfold further, and the reader may ask himself the question why everything went wrong? So, when I had to translate a poem with an encrypted map, I had tried very hard not to deviate from the content, but to choose words so that they rhymed."

"In the Redwall stories, an important character was Martin the Conqueror, an important character who saved the Wildflower Land from Kotir's tyranny. In English, his name sounded like Martin the Warrior, and it would be very easy to just call him Martin the Warrior or Martin the Fighter, but this name does not have that spirit of sublimity, pride, and heroism."

"I began flipping through dictionaries in search of synonyms for the word 'warrior' to convey not just the occupation, but the fact that this is a brave hero. And when I found the word 'conqueror', it was just so perfect to describe this character that when I came across his reference in the fourth book, I felt inside that it was the most apt description of Martin, especially with the way the other characters treated him with honor and respect. And there were also many different animals in the story, including moles, who spoke their strange mole language ... and the question arose how to convey it in Ukrainian, so that the reader does not sit and guess what the moles were talking about."

"We decided to play with different dialects of the Ukrainian language, something close to the speech of Western Ukraine, but what a quest it was to decipher their speech! Oh, these moles, we learned a lot with them!"

"Finally, I will say that the books of the Redwall series, although they are considered children's literature, they are mandatory for all adults to read. They raise important questions of friendship, trust, war and peace, that only by joint efforts can we defeat the enemy. When you read Mossflower, you see these parallels with our reality. I recommend reading this book not only to children, but also adults, you will definitely like it!"

The novel features an all-new map, as well as 11 interior story illustrations, five of which are in color. Once again, Kolosova does a fantastic job with the characters and the scale of them, especially Tsarmina Greeneyes.

Please see below for a full list of the illustrations, and a preview of a few of them. I really hope Nebo keeps going with the Redwall series, because they have something really special here.