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You said exactly what I have been thinking as I read the book recently. It so impressed me that I've been raving about it to all the family until they all think me a bit eccentric. I'm so glad to have stumbled into it again when I had enough time to savor each word.
In comparison to Stevenson's Treasure Island, well, you can't! god!! Please no more old English spoken by pirates! The first page of T.W.I.T.Ws will clense your soul! READ IT. Isn't it the world we'd all like to live in?
I agree that the wind in the willows is a classic tale, but I do not believe that it should be classed as childrens fiction. When I read the novel recently, I was transported back to my youth, but there were many parts of the novel that I did not understand when I was a child, but bear much much significance now that I am older. In addition I would like to disagree with reply 2. Treasure Island is a masterpiece - perhaps more so than twitw. Perhaps you need to reread it!
<br><br>Having just rediscovered the Michael Hague illustrated version of this story I too have been struck by the beauty of the prose...but, also by the psychological sketches of the various attractions and relationships and the society it appears to describe...I was also thinking that The Piper at the Gates of Dawn chapter is a fabulous invocation of the very best possible rave party, complete with "D.J Pan" !<br><br>
Thanks Prof. your words have helped me find the elusive words I needed to complete an essay on T.W.in the W. I totally agree with anyone who suggests that this book takes you through from childhood to adult hood. marvellous work which has not lost its impact over the years.
The Wind In the Willows is one of the all-time classic books. It is an evocative, haunting, amusing, pleasureable, enchanting and sentimental treat. I have at least 15 versions of it, most of them illustrated by different artists. Hague, Foreman, Benson, etc.<br>It ranks alongside Black Beauty, Treasure Island, the Alice books, Watership Down, The Secret Garden, The Hobbit and Duncton Wood as books that will<br>always be read, enjoyed and appreciated.
Mole - hesitant, timid, dependable <br>Ratty - in tune with the river<br>Badger - brooding, firm, gruff<br>Toad - irascible, bombastic, tempestuous, loyal <br>Otter - a family 'man', brave, links Badger and the Wild Wood with Ratty and the Riverbankers
I am an erstwhile English professor who has just moved into a cottage on a lake beside a wild wood. In the evenings I have been reading The Wind in the Willows (with Ernest Shepherd's superb illustrations) a chapter at a time aloud to a friend who missed it as a child. I have been struck by how wonderfully it trips off the tongue, like poetry or Roman oratory. The vocabulary makes no compromises to young readers, and indeed the themes and situations and psychological nuances seem to me to concern the world of adults far more than children. <br> Gradually I am arriving at the conviction that this incomparable work is in fact a true masterpiece. I don't mean a masterpiece within the genre of children's fiction, but one of the great literary achievements of all time. The subtlety of its evocations (The Piper at the Gates of Dawn), the depth and delicacy of its nostalgia (Dulce Domum), the wide-open abandon of its humor (Mr. Toad)--earn for it the foremost rank. I have not (yet) ventured into any sort of systematic literary criticism of this work. I am simply reading it as a weary Everyman. But I would just like to mention that I hear the cadences of genius in this book. What more refreshing pastime could friends share than this gentle, loving masterpiece?
The Wind in the Willows is an epic prose poem and every paragraph a paean to the English language. Perhaps Plato would have called it "On Friendship."