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The Wind in the Willows
The adventures of Ratty, Mole, Badger, and Toad of Toad Hall. The Wind in the Willows appeals to both children and adults, but for different reasons. Children love the zany Toad of Toad Hall and his frantic escapades. Adults appreciate the lyrical, superlatively wistful descriptions of the rustic English landscape. Everyone recognises the values of loyalty and friendship that resonate throughout its pages.That is why The Wind in the Willows has been recognised, for more than 100 years, as one of the greatest books of all time. Now you can have this incomparable story read to you. This audio version is completely faithful to the original novel.
- GenresClassics
Hardcover
Published July 17, 2012
5 people are currently reading
9 people want to read
About the author
Kenneth Grahame
798 books778 followersKenneth Grahame was a British writer. He is best remembered for the classic of children's literature The Wind in the Willows (1908). Scottish by birth, he spent most of his childhood with his grandmother in England, following the death of his mother and his father's inability to look after the children. After attending St Edward's School in Oxford, his ambition to attend university was thwarted and he joined the Bank of England, where he had a successful career. Before writing The Wind in the Willows, he published three other books: Pagan Papers (1893), The Golden Age (1895), and Dream Days (1898).
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 18, 2024
I had never read this as a child but knew it as a classic and enjoyed the tales of friendship and characters while we read to the kids. Each chapter is unto itself and should be seen as a bit of a collection of tales. I often think books wrongly get compared to whatever came before them, and that might be at play here. After reading George Macdonald's Princess and Curdie, this book, while still classic and lovely, lacked by comparison. Still it was a Sweet book.
June 27, 2025
First time reading a childhood favorite. I have watched it many times. This is a great one for any children's literature collection!!
October 23, 2024
Just so much fun. And a great character study!
Whee!
Whee!
September 13, 2024
My big brother coerced me into swapping a balsa-kit glider I’d had for my eighth birthday for his “The Wind in the Willows”. He’d acquired the book when - with much disgust - he’d had to memorise and recite Ratty’s poem, “Ducks’ Ditty”, at school.
Reading the book now as a grown up, I’m astonished that I first read it when I was just eight years old - devoured it, in fact, and became quite obsessed with it. Apart from its many grown-up themes, the language itself seems pretty complex and challenging for a child.
Some of the more esoteric words and phrases that I assume must have stretched the vocabulary of an eight year old to the limits include, for example:
- “languorous siesta”
- “meadow-sweet debonair and odorous in amber jerkin”
- “for others the asperities, the stubborn endurance”
- “the violence of Mole’s paroxysm of grief”
- “singularly hideous habiliments”
- “in casquet and corselet of steel”
- “the dark selvedge of the river bank”
- “a silvery, climbing phosphorescence”
As well as his complex choice of language, Kenneth Grahame’s grammatical style is also pretty sophisticated. His sentences often run to 100 or so words with numerous subordinate clauses. The longest sentence I noticed has 157 words separated by 6 semi-colons and 15 commas (the extraordinarily lyrical description of Pan in chapter 7). You might expect that from James Joyce but not from an Edwardian children’s writer!
Other complex grammatical devices include the use of the esoteric subjunctive mood (“Lest the awe should dwell”, chapter 7) and his extended Greek similes in the Homeric tradition (“As a child that has fallen happily asleep … ; even so Portly searched … “). In fact, the grammatical construction of Grahame’s prose is so perfect, it sometimes struck me that it might have been translated from the Latin! And then, of course, there are several chapters named classically, as well as numerous nods to the Greek Epics (for example, Badger, Mole, Ratty and Toad described as the “Heroic Four”).
But the challenging language and syntax didn’t seem to get in the way of my reading pleasure when I was aged eight. And they still don’t. In fact, one of my new pleasures as an older reader is struggling with versions of “The Wind in the Willows” translated into different foreign languages. Dutch seems particularly well suited to “Ducks’ Ditty”, translating it quaintly as “De Kwakers” (“Overal op het water, / En tussen het hoge riet, / Scharrelen de kwakers, / Hun hoofden zie je niet!”)
Some of us may well have met characters in real life vexingly similar to Mr Toad - the life and soul of the party but tiringly “all about me”. I’m not sure whether my favourite character is Ratty or Mole. I love their affectionate relationship as best of chums - their physical and emotional closeness in a golden age of unproblematic male friendship before gender politics made things complicated.
Sometimes it’s Ratty as the extrovert who I enjoy - his roving, outdoor life, networking happily along the riverbank. But then again, I always find Mole’s introvert ways so endearing - his natural inclination towards everything snug and cosy.
In fact, as a child, my favourite chapter was “Mr Badger”, precisely because of the comforting sense of safety and security that envelops Mole in Badger’s wonderful underground home. His burrow is warm and reassuring, a safehaven in the middle of the dark, threatening Wild Wood, a shelter against the scariness of the big world outside.
When I was ten I spent all my Christmas gift-vouchers on a hard-back copy of “The Wind in the Willows” with coloured illustrations by Ernest Shepard. I still remember gazing entranced and fascinated by the picture of Badger’s kitchen, memorising every detail of the deep armchairs, hams hanging from the rafters and blue China plates on the dresser.
Mole’s yearning for the familiar and comforting is especially powerful in the chapter, “Dulce Domum” (Home Sweet Home) which, as a grown up, is now my favourite. Searching for a place called home is a central theme of the book.
Even though Ratty is unsettled by the seasonal pull of the South and yearns for the adventure of the far off and the unknown - the lure of “violet seas, tawny sands, and lizard-haunted walls” - nevertheless he’s still called back by the more powerful attraction of his beloved riverbank.
Perhaps a modern political scientist would itch to interpret this as the duality between the “Anywheres” who value independence and fluidity versus the more rooted “Somewheres” who prioritise security and continuity?
Chapters of excitement and adventure alternate with chapters of philosophical contemplation. After the comedy and excitement of Toad’s escapades, “Wayfarers All” (chapter 9) provides a lyrical meditation on life’s restlessness and the stirrings of the heart - nostalgia for what’s passed and endless yearning for what we can never have.
Kenneth Grahame’s metaphorical rambles for adult readers reach a level of ecstatic, spiritual intensity in the central chapter, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn”. This was my Father’s favourite chapter - and we had a reading from it at his funeral. Ratty and Mole meet their Maker, the “august Presence”, the “Friend and Helper”. But their vision of the Pan, the deity of the animal world, their glimpse of the Divine, is followed necessarily by memory-wiping oblivion to enable ordinary life to continue.
This is the most sublime articulation of the theme of endless search that runs constantly throughout the novel - searching for home, searching for place, searching for meaning. What lies beyond the horizon is endlessly fascinating, enticing and dangerous.
It’s sobering to think that the first generation of young readers of “The Wind in the Willows” would have been those who barely a decade later were thrown into the death, devastation and destruction of the First World War.
So is there a dark prophecy in Ratty’s warning when he exhorts his new friend Mole to curb his curiosity about where the future lies? Perhaps “The Wind in the Willows” is the elegiac Indian summer before the storm clouds gather and the troops march off towards the far horizon of the “blue and dim Wide World beyond the Wild Wood” …
Reading the book now as a grown up, I’m astonished that I first read it when I was just eight years old - devoured it, in fact, and became quite obsessed with it. Apart from its many grown-up themes, the language itself seems pretty complex and challenging for a child.
Some of the more esoteric words and phrases that I assume must have stretched the vocabulary of an eight year old to the limits include, for example:
- “languorous siesta”
- “meadow-sweet debonair and odorous in amber jerkin”
- “for others the asperities, the stubborn endurance”
- “the violence of Mole’s paroxysm of grief”
- “singularly hideous habiliments”
- “in casquet and corselet of steel”
- “the dark selvedge of the river bank”
- “a silvery, climbing phosphorescence”
As well as his complex choice of language, Kenneth Grahame’s grammatical style is also pretty sophisticated. His sentences often run to 100 or so words with numerous subordinate clauses. The longest sentence I noticed has 157 words separated by 6 semi-colons and 15 commas (the extraordinarily lyrical description of Pan in chapter 7). You might expect that from James Joyce but not from an Edwardian children’s writer!
Other complex grammatical devices include the use of the esoteric subjunctive mood (“Lest the awe should dwell”, chapter 7) and his extended Greek similes in the Homeric tradition (“As a child that has fallen happily asleep … ; even so Portly searched … “). In fact, the grammatical construction of Grahame’s prose is so perfect, it sometimes struck me that it might have been translated from the Latin! And then, of course, there are several chapters named classically, as well as numerous nods to the Greek Epics (for example, Badger, Mole, Ratty and Toad described as the “Heroic Four”).
But the challenging language and syntax didn’t seem to get in the way of my reading pleasure when I was aged eight. And they still don’t. In fact, one of my new pleasures as an older reader is struggling with versions of “The Wind in the Willows” translated into different foreign languages. Dutch seems particularly well suited to “Ducks’ Ditty”, translating it quaintly as “De Kwakers” (“Overal op het water, / En tussen het hoge riet, / Scharrelen de kwakers, / Hun hoofden zie je niet!”)
Some of us may well have met characters in real life vexingly similar to Mr Toad - the life and soul of the party but tiringly “all about me”. I’m not sure whether my favourite character is Ratty or Mole. I love their affectionate relationship as best of chums - their physical and emotional closeness in a golden age of unproblematic male friendship before gender politics made things complicated.
Sometimes it’s Ratty as the extrovert who I enjoy - his roving, outdoor life, networking happily along the riverbank. But then again, I always find Mole’s introvert ways so endearing - his natural inclination towards everything snug and cosy.
In fact, as a child, my favourite chapter was “Mr Badger”, precisely because of the comforting sense of safety and security that envelops Mole in Badger’s wonderful underground home. His burrow is warm and reassuring, a safehaven in the middle of the dark, threatening Wild Wood, a shelter against the scariness of the big world outside.
When I was ten I spent all my Christmas gift-vouchers on a hard-back copy of “The Wind in the Willows” with coloured illustrations by Ernest Shepard. I still remember gazing entranced and fascinated by the picture of Badger’s kitchen, memorising every detail of the deep armchairs, hams hanging from the rafters and blue China plates on the dresser.
Mole’s yearning for the familiar and comforting is especially powerful in the chapter, “Dulce Domum” (Home Sweet Home) which, as a grown up, is now my favourite. Searching for a place called home is a central theme of the book.
Even though Ratty is unsettled by the seasonal pull of the South and yearns for the adventure of the far off and the unknown - the lure of “violet seas, tawny sands, and lizard-haunted walls” - nevertheless he’s still called back by the more powerful attraction of his beloved riverbank.
Perhaps a modern political scientist would itch to interpret this as the duality between the “Anywheres” who value independence and fluidity versus the more rooted “Somewheres” who prioritise security and continuity?
Chapters of excitement and adventure alternate with chapters of philosophical contemplation. After the comedy and excitement of Toad’s escapades, “Wayfarers All” (chapter 9) provides a lyrical meditation on life’s restlessness and the stirrings of the heart - nostalgia for what’s passed and endless yearning for what we can never have.
Kenneth Grahame’s metaphorical rambles for adult readers reach a level of ecstatic, spiritual intensity in the central chapter, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn”. This was my Father’s favourite chapter - and we had a reading from it at his funeral. Ratty and Mole meet their Maker, the “august Presence”, the “Friend and Helper”. But their vision of the Pan, the deity of the animal world, their glimpse of the Divine, is followed necessarily by memory-wiping oblivion to enable ordinary life to continue.
This is the most sublime articulation of the theme of endless search that runs constantly throughout the novel - searching for home, searching for place, searching for meaning. What lies beyond the horizon is endlessly fascinating, enticing and dangerous.
It’s sobering to think that the first generation of young readers of “The Wind in the Willows” would have been those who barely a decade later were thrown into the death, devastation and destruction of the First World War.
So is there a dark prophecy in Ratty’s warning when he exhorts his new friend Mole to curb his curiosity about where the future lies? Perhaps “The Wind in the Willows” is the elegiac Indian summer before the storm clouds gather and the troops march off towards the far horizon of the “blue and dim Wide World beyond the Wild Wood” …
December 10, 2025
Read this book with my 7yo. I had never read it as a child and I enjoyed it so much! My son loved it too. 🤗
December 16, 2024
I read this with my eight-year-old, and it was an absolute joy. Mr. Toad, of Toad Hall, may be one the finest literary creations out there. Every page he's on is delightful and hilarious. We used this edition, which has lovely, muted, realistic illustrations, alongside a bright and cheerful edition illustrated by David Roberts. Both really added to the story, and it was very fun comparing the illustrations as we read.
I like reading older books with my kids because I think the complicated Edwardian language helps teach some literary patience. Grahame goes on about the fields and scenery, and occasionally waxes poetical about the inner life of one of his characters. I think parsing through these long sentences full of clauses and appositives is the linguistic version of lifting weights. Occasionally, even as an adult, I found myself thinking, "Let's get to the point, Kenneth," but I loved how my little guy just snuggled in and let the flow of the words wash over him.
Finally, is there anything more satisfying in the world for a child than to read that a motor-car makes the sound, "poop-poop?" Great book!
I like reading older books with my kids because I think the complicated Edwardian language helps teach some literary patience. Grahame goes on about the fields and scenery, and occasionally waxes poetical about the inner life of one of his characters. I think parsing through these long sentences full of clauses and appositives is the linguistic version of lifting weights. Occasionally, even as an adult, I found myself thinking, "Let's get to the point, Kenneth," but I loved how my little guy just snuggled in and let the flow of the words wash over him.
Finally, is there anything more satisfying in the world for a child than to read that a motor-car makes the sound, "poop-poop?" Great book!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews