Wind in the Willows - E.H. Shepard, Kenneth Grahame

...next term and saw The Wind in the Willows was on her Year 2 syllabus .I almost envy her. This will be her first meeting with the creatures who live along the river in a romanticised pastoral England that never quite was. Astonishingly, this book almost never quite was the highly regarded and well known book it is today.

Kenneth Grahame was a banker for the bank of England, and after publishing a few stories, here and there, that went ...
...seemed destined to drift on the tide unremarked, save for it coming to the attention of A. A. Milne, who was so taken with the book that he penned Toad of Toad Hall for the stage based upon it. This shone a light on the original book version, and a classic was discovered by the world.

The book is an ensemble piece, with a diverse set of characters. We have the quiet and fairly shy Mole who moves to his new home along the river and ... more

Ah....childhood memories. This book brings back so many fond memories of rainy afternoons and even a read along at school. It all came rushing back as I sat down to go through my daughter's curriculum guide for next term and saw The Wind in the Willows was on her Year 2 syllabus .I almost envy her. This will be her first meeting with the creatures who live along the river in a romanticised pastoral England that never quite was. Astonishingly, this book almost never quite was the highly regarded and well known book it is today.

Kenneth Grahame was a banker for the bank of England, and after publishing a few stories, here and there, that went greatly unnoted, penned The Wind in the Willows. It too seemed destined to drift on the tide unremarked, save for it coming to the attention of A. A. Milne, who was so taken with the book that he penned Toad of Toad Hall for the stage based upon it. This shone a light on the original book version, and a classic was discovered by the world.

The book is an ensemble piece, with a diverse set of characters. We have the quiet and fairly shy Mole who moves to his new home along the river and is befriended by Ratty, who is actually a water vole. Ratty is also great friends with Toad. Toad is a bit of a well to do jack the lad. Living in a grand home, Toad Hall, he swaggers and boasts and picks up new hobbies with keen enthusiasm and dropping others cold at the drop of a hat. Brash, swaggering, and a hedonist, he always overdoes things in life, and it is not very surprising that he comes a cropper.

Indeed, one such hobby related whim famously sees him stealing a car and driving it so fast and without any experience that it should come as no surprise that he crashes it. Sadly for him, the police are not nearly as amused as he might wish and he is sent to jail.Poor Mole and ratty are saddened by their inability to reform their friend, and distraught when his known absence allows destructive squatters to move into Toad Hall. The irrepressible Toad gives us a rollicking read when he plays upon the sensitivities of his jailer's daughter and engineers an escape, culminating in an escapade with Ratty, Mole, and Mr Badger to take back Toad Hall.

This is not to say the story doesn't have its moral aspects. Toad KNOWS what he is doing is wrong, he just never stops to think first and plunges along heedlessly.he is guilt ridden and remorseful after, and it is not until the end of the book after all his misfortunes that he grows up and realises that he has two really true friends, and that he doesn't deserve them. he reconsiders his life, and goes about making amends to all he has wronged. A nice little moral to the tale, and by means not one that is that far fetched. I know many a young person, child and teen, who plunge along in such abandon only to suddenly hit that rock bottom, see the truth of their actions and settle on down to being fine members of local society. This is exactly what Toad is having to do, and Ratty and Mole muddle along in their lives, trying desperately to help their friend before he hits that bottom.

Parts of the story move slowly and are almost bucolic, with sojourns in the wood and languid meanderings along the river. This is alternated with frenetically paced passages, usually involving Toad. You get just enough of the slower pace to catch your mental breath before he is off again diving willy nilly into some sort of trouble at a frantic speed. Its a story that 100 years later (it was published in 1908), still enchants the young as well as the old alike. The descriptions are wonderful but not over long and snooze worthy, and it is well worth being choosy over which edition you elect to buy as the story lends itself to fabulous illustrations. We ourselves have gone for the original illustrated edition currently enjoying a reprint, featuring the art of E. H. Shepard of Winnie the Pooh fame.The illustrations of that edition are wonderfully evocative and bound to delight the eye of the reader. To my own eye, they serve to help visualise the rest of the story superbly.

Reading proficiency wise, this book is probably most suited as a read aloud to the less proficient reader aged 9 and under, though more able children will not find it overly difficult as long as you help with the vocabulary. Some of the language is a bit old fashioned, a hundred years on, but completely understandable and not seeming anachronistic. Children may be a bit confused reading it, however, if this is their first exposure to early 20th century society, with talks of washer women washing clothes in the cars,and so on, but this can serve the purpose of opening up interest and discussion on the era without it being just a "boring old history lesson".

I ordered our copy with the Shepard illustrations from Amazon.co.uk for under £5 new, and no doubt Waterstones and other good book sellers will also carry this or one of the other illustrated editions. For the adult, the Wordsworth Classics does a budget version, but I tend to avoid those with children as they lack illustrations, the paper tends to be cheap, and the typeface small, being more like an edition for the older student or adult wanting a read than an edition aimed at enticing children to read and enjoy. My daughter is entranced with the glimpses she got of the Shepard edition of the book once it arrived, and we look forward to reading it together this August. Lucky girl! 

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