The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Listened to this on Audible and really enjoyed it. For some reason, although I knew bits and pieces from wherever, I had never read the whole. Really good.
Have 'Em Delivered
Write to the Editor
The fact that you gave it only 4 stars is the most controversial thing you ever written.
Yes! It is a blissful, heavenly 5 out of 5!
Couldn’t agree more. I rarely disagree with Pastor Doug, but this may require a call to repentance :)
He gave it only 4/5 because he listened on Audible and did not read it to his kids. That is not the right way to experience this book. This is one of bedtime books that all parents should read to their kids. That experience is 5/5.
Given your reading speed, how could you tolerate input via Audible? 2X speed?
I enjoyed this book as well, but my kids didn’t get into it too much. We read about three chapters and had to quit. One of them was just 4 though and I think the vocabulary and syntax were just too advanced for him. Will give it a restart later this year. I myself have misfired on a few books that I have later read and really enjoyed. It just takes more work to read Cormac McCarthy than Lee Child, or Kenneth Grahame than AA Milne.
Unless your kids are precocious this is a good book for the 8-10 yr range. It is one of my absolute favorites. We at least read the Christmas scene each winter.
I would read it aloud; the words have a magical rhythmic quality. It is a book I would make sure each child has in hard cover to become part of his or her permanent library. I have read my own copy every couple of years or so since I was a very young child.
I would not let my daughter see the Disney version until she had read the book and learned to love it. The movie is cute, but it is not beautiful.
“What?” cried the Rat, open-mouthed: “Never been in a—you never—well I—what have you been doing, then?”
C. S. Lewis alludes to that line somewhere, I think in That Hideous Strength. And maybe Mr. or Mrs. Beaver says it.
I always found the piper at the gates of dawn scene particularly moving. Van Morrison has a song about it.
Edit: Doesn’t Jane think “Hang Spring cleaning” in THS?
He would have a heart of stone who is not moved by the Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
When I am feeling inordinately pleased with myself, I remind myself of Toad’s Banquet preparation: the speeches, the heroic odes, the soliloquies. I revise the poem he wrote to himself and sang twenty times in a row:
The knights in a state of euphoria
Saluted their brand new Queen;
O was it the gracious Victoria?
Why no, it was Jilly-bean.
And then I put on my hair-shirt and do penance.
Hail!
The encounter with Pan is also echoed by Mr Beaver in the line, “of course he isn’t safe – – but he’s good.”
“One does not argue about The Wind in the Willows. The young man gives it to the girl with whom he is in love, and, if she does not like it, asks her to return his letters. The older man tries it on his nephew, and alters his will accordingly. The book is a test of character. We can’t criticize it, because it is criticizing us. But I must give you one word of warning. When you sit down to it, don’t be so ridiculous as to suppose that you are sitting in judgment on my taste, or on the… Read more »