words to inspire before you expire

Tag: Kenneth Grahame

The Wind in the Willows

Hello again, class.

The Wind in the Willows is one of the most pleasant stories I’ve read in a long time. It’s short and entertaining, full of talking animals on crazy adventures, and never shallow enough to lose suspension of disbelief. More importantly, it’s a children’s story—easily what a parent would read to their children every night, which means unlike most novels on the 50-books list, this actually is something everyone should (and could) read.


The story follows four animal characters, who each live on or around a great river: the Mole, the Water Rat, the Toad, and the Badger. Their stories intersect mildly, as the Mole adventurously abandons his home or the Toad tries desperately to return to his own, and the characters gather together at the end to wrap up the plot. It’s funny and sweet.

Author Kenneth Grahame

I don’t think the story and characters would be all that special, though, if it wasn’t for Kenneth Grahame’s writing. He adapted the bedtime stories he would tell his son into this novel, and because of that, he made it meaningful. Grahame balanced the animal-instinct for adventure with the desire for the comforts of home; he harnessed the distinctions between creatures and embraced those differences; and he portrayed the simple elements of nature with the same depth and complexity as the world of humanity can be perceived—at least by a child. His care for this story made it beautiful, and that’s why it makes the list.

Everything seems to have a dream-like quality as well, and that’s no mistake—the word “dream” is used obnoxiously often. Apart from a few main story arcs, most of the chapters feel like individual short stories, jumping between random plot points like a dream would. The talking animals, the exciting adventures, the beautifully comforting language . . . The Wind in the Willows is a childhood dream brought to life.


I do still question it’s inclusion on the list. The excellent writing and the portrayal of a child’s fantasy dreamworld is already on the list—Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll’s classic is also much more popular and more fantasy-heavy than The Wind in the Willows, so why include Grahame’s novel at all? If we needed another children’s fantasy, we could have also included The Hobbit or Peter Pan . . . why The Wind in the Willows?

I don’t have much of an answer. It’s not that The Wind in the Willows is bad, but there are plenty of books missing from this list. Any one of them could have replaced this one. In any case, this would only be a concern if we were ranking the books on this list, and since that’s not what the list is about, I encourage you all to give this story a go.


I’m reading Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird next—for my book #25! Halfway there! And there’s no better book to wrap up the first half of my blog with.

Until next time!

Prof. Jeffrey

“‘And you, you will come too, young brother; for the days pass, and never return, and the South still waits for you. Take the Adventure, heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes! ‘Tis but a banging of the door behind you, a blithesome step forward, and you are out of the old life and into the new! Then some day, some day long hence, jog home here if you will, when the cup has been drained and the play has been played, and sit down by your quiet river with a store of goodly memories for company.'”

—from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

“As he hurried along, eagerly anticipating the moment when he would be at home again among the things he knew and liked, the Mole saw clearly that he was an animal of tilled field and hedge-row, linked to the ploughed furrow, the frequented pasture, the lane of evening lingerings, the cultivated garden-plot. For others the asperities, the stubborn endurance, or the clash of actual conflict, that went with Nature in the rough; he must be wise, must keep to the pleasant places in which his lines were laid and which held adventure enough, in their way, to last for a lifetime.”

—from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

“‘And you really live by the river? What a jolly life!’

‘By it and with it and on it and in it,’ said the Rat. ‘It’s brother and sister to me, and aunts, and company, and food and drink, and (naturally) washing. It’s my world, and I don’t want any other. What it hasn’t got is not worth having, and what it doesn’t know is not worth knowing.'”

—from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

“‘Nothing seems really to matter, that’s the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don’t; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you’re always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you’ve done it there’s always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you’d much better not.'”

—from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame