Mount Readmore Book Review, 2017 39/100

The Wind in the Willows By Kenneth Grahame

Audiobook Edition, narrated by Michael Hordern

Finished on 4/22/2017

Goodreads 

Genres: English Fairy Tale, Fantasy, Children

A day in the life of four English forest animals.

Spoiler-tastic review

I’ve been meaning to read this book for years, ever since I read the biography of Diana Wynne Jones and she mentioned that this book was highly influential for her. When the audiobook version of it was free on Audible last month, I ‘bought’ it. I am highly satisfied with that financial decision.

‘The Wind in the Willows’ is an ~century old English children’s story, about Toad, Badger, Mole and Ratty. It’s a period piece, featuring automobiles as the hot-new-tech and horse and buggy as old and boring. This is firmly set in England, with refrences to Kitchener and the queen. I found it to be highly enjoyable.

Plot: Shenanigans. Lots and lots of forest animal shenanigans.

Characterization: None of the characters are realistic, but all of them have distinct character traits. For example Toad is an Upper Class Twit who has the attention span of a six year old on crack. The characters aren’t realistically human, but they’re not human so who cares?

This was a fast, easy read for me (an adult). For a child this would probably take a week or more as in paper it’s 256pages.

Audiobook notes: The audiobook version had music and sound effects. I was skeptical at first, but it really paid off. It was a fantastic production.