For a children's classic, I was more than incredibly disappointed. First of all, I just didn't think that it was interesting. I never got attached to any of the characters, and therefore never cared about that they did. Second, it doesn't make any sense. How does a frog pass for a human washer-woman? Why are some of the animals wild and others not? Unreasonable situations like this work in other books, but for whatever reason, does not work in this one. And finally, this book teaches terrible morals. It was shocking. And pointless. Now I remember why I never finished reading it as a child.

Seeing an update here, I was reminded that this was one of the tattered old books at the remote ranch of my youth, and one I read in turn to my daughter (numerous times at her request).

A simple story as is appropriate for young children, it is essentially a depiction of idealized morality told through the camaraderie and adventures of mainly four anthropomorphized animals (a mole, a rat, a toad, and a Badger). Ignoring the intended audience, one might relate it with the more recent Watership Down.

Thinking about this book I'm reminded of something A. A. Milne said about it.

"When you sit down to read this book, don’t be so ridiculous as to suppose that you are sitting in judgment on my taste, or on the art of Kenneth Grahame. You are merely sitting in judgment on yourself. You may be worthy: I don’t know, But it is you who are on trial."

I was suspicious of this book when I was a kid. It's all, "Hey kids, here's a fun story about talking animals," right? And I was like no, this is just you banging on about trees. This is a pastoral poem in disguise. It's boring. This book is like the guy who comes into your classroom and sits backwards on a chair all, "Sammy the sock puppet is here to get real about abstinence!" It's like when your mom was like "I froze this banana and it's just as good as a popsicle!" It is not. Mom is full of shit.

More things that are bullshit
- Carob
- The Berenstain Bears
- Mathletes
- Sturbridge Village

You can't fool kids, and since I am super immature you can't fool me either: Wind in the Willows is still boring. I'm not saying it's all bad! The parts with Mr. Toad are pretty entertaining. Poop poop! Lol, I'm on Team Toad. And it's sweet that Ratty and Mole are so obviously gay.


blah blah blah trees and shit

But it's like sitting through Mr. Rogers just to get to the Make-Believe stuff. In between there are just pages and pages of hogwash like this:

"Mole stood still a moment, held in thought. As one wakened suddenly from a beautiful dream, who struggles to recall it, but can recapture nothing but a dim sense of the beauty in it, the beauty! Till that, too, fades away in its turn, and the dreamer bitterly accepts the hard, cold waking and all its penalties."

And here's what that is: it's booooring.

So, what was bullshit for you when you were a kid? Knowing is half the battle! Now I want a popsicle.

"The real way to travel... The only way to travel! O bliss! O poop-poop!... What carts I shall fling into the ditch! Horrid carts-- common carts-- canary-coloured carts!.... Me complain of that beautiful, heavenly vision! That swan, that sunbeam, that thunderbolt!"

--Frog on automobiles

Rereading! Again!

=========

So you've begun to get really busy at work and you're feeling stressed out.

Then you watched The Sixth Sense (by yourself, after dark) so you can discuss it on a podcast.

And finally, you just know you're going to have nightmares and possibly be afraid of the dark if you wake up having to make that trip out of bed ... based on the last time you watched that darned movie.

What do you do?

What DO you do?

You pull out your trusty copy of The Wind in the Willows, that's what.

This gentle, imaginative tale of small animals who straddle both animal and human behavior in the most charming way will pull you in and have you thinking of Rat's splendid picnic basket, Badger's den beneath the Wild Woods, or Toad's way of being infuriating while his friends love him anyway. It pulled me into that fantasy world as a child and does so again when I read it as an adult.

Highly recommended (after all Teddy Roosevelt can't be wrong ... and this book has his letter to the author in the introduction).

I have finally decided (after stalling once again and this indeed being my third time in a row) to not continue with Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows and yes, to also and equally give up altogether and by this consider The Wind in the Willows as a novel permanently on my "could not finish" shelf. For no, I simply do not (and since my early childhood at that) generally enjoy reading novels (or any kind of stories in fact) where animal protagonists, where animal characters wear human garb and act and talk as humans generally tend to, and I am therefore (and of course) also just not in any manner interested and engaged enough to continue with The Wind in the Willows (for yes indeed, Kenneth Grahame's animal characters all being dressed and acting, emoting like human beings, they have and this has also felt rather majorly creepy to and for me).

Now I do know and realise that many readers seem to consider The Wind in the Willows a personal childhood favourite and that it certainly is very much deemed to be a classic of British children's literature (and this even though Kenneth Grahame originally did not even pen his story as children's fare and that characters like Mole, Toad, Badger et al are in fact and actually supposed to represent adult males, are meant to be adult Edwardian era British men). But very much personally (and primarily as already mentioned above due to my not really if at all liking or even being able to appreciate and accept as for pleasure reading stories, novels featuring totally and completely human based, anthropomorphic animas even at the best of times) I just do not and cannot see any (even minor) charm and readability for me in The Wind in the Willows and have thus also not in any way liked my (admittedly short) reading time enough to keep going with the book (and albeit that I do feel a trifle guilty at abandoning The Wind in the Willows and only granting a one star rating, I do stand by this, as I have neither enjoyed Kenneth Grahame's premise nor how weirdly and anthropomorphically human most of the animal characters of The Wind in the Willows appear and behave).

Reading this as an adult and trying to imagine what I might have made of it as a child, I must say I'm not sure that child-me would have enjoyed this book particularly because of the surprising amount of drama in it. I've always tended to being quite, quite invested into fictional characters' fates and thus would possibly have been in tears and having nightmares more than once. (Yes, I was a rather sensitive little plant.)

As an adult, the book left me with a few questions:
Was the not so straight subtext that you can easily read into this intentional, with the confirmed bachlors friend group at the centre of the tale? Did contemporaries pick it up?
And would someone really base the character with the most prominent flaws on his frail, peaky only child for whom he invented the stories in the first place?
If so, for the last question, Toad's lesson and redemption at the end seems like a rather cruel and on the nose attempt at educating via upbraiding. After a closer look at the rather tragic family history surrounding this book, I wonder if it might not rather have been Mole who was accidentally based on Alastair Grahame.

After having made myself sad successfully with that line of background reading, let me add that, at least, the illustrations by Eric Kincaid in my edition were lovely.

I love this story, the slightly anarchic and completely irresponsible has the best friends ever!

Много са ми любими приключенията на животните край Голямата река!

Препрочитал съм книгата нееднократно и не ми омръзва, в нея малки и големи могат да открият ценни модели на поведение и размисли за човешката природа, поднесени изключително интересно и интелигентно.

Къртичко, Плъхчо, г-н Язовец и дори тоя непрокопсаник и нехранимайко - Жабока, всички те завинаги остават мои верни приятели!

Илюстрациите към това издание са от Петър Чуклев и си имат своя чар, веднъж като им посвикнеш. :)

Art by Robert Ingpen.

“Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.”

n  It takes a mean adult to criticize a children's book; and a mean child to moralize a children's book, IMO. n

I found myself smiling as I finished this reading of The Wind in the Willows. Yes I enjoyed the tale of Rat and Mole and Badger and Toad and all the other assorted animals and their people who populate that corner of England.

What struck me most during this reading, which is my second as far as I recall, is that this just doesn't feel like a children's book in so many ways. The language is so rich. The descriptions, whether of characters or places, are so full. I find this better in some ways as an adult's children's story with all the obvious parables and lessons. Would they be obvious to a child? I wonder. Well this adult enjoyed them, given in their animal guise. Love and value your friends. Avoid that pride which definitely will lead to a fall. Biblical. Is this in fact the garden of Eden.