The Wind in the Willows

What's the big deal with this piece of garbage? You have a bunch of critters goofing around, getting into ridiculous jams and reading boring poetry.

To top it all you have the sociopath Mr Toad, with whom we're supposed to sympathize. Mr Toad is no Mister. He is just a slimy toad. He should have rotted in jail. Let the weasels have his manor - they seemed to make better use of it than the toad did.

One can see why the book would be popular among the English owner class. 'Wind in the Willows' presents the owners in their favorite light - they appear to be goofy but lovable characters. The fight at the end of the novel is a fight for the property rights of the indolent aristocracy.
But why would a normal person like this drivel? Do you claim show more you should be allowed to steal a car, get hammered, cause an accident, and then escape jail? Do you perhaps own a manor that has been invaded by bums during your extended bender? What kind of a children's book is this?

To hell with 'Mr Toad' and this crummy 'classic'. show less

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3229914.html

Going back to the book after many decades, I picked up on how marginalised the women characters are - two are cheated by Toad, and that's about it. There is no hint of how the animal characters reproduce, just manly friendship - with the striking exception of the Otters who take central stage in the single most memorable chapter, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn", in which Rat goes in search of a neighbour's child and encounters the ineffable. It's also interesting that Toad has his encounters with human-world justice, but must resort to brute force rather than the law to regain residence at Toad Hall. (Though his quick forgiveness of former foes is rather charming.) It is a charming, quick show more read, but it has dated ever so slightly. show less

I apologize to the majority of my GR friends who absolutely adored this book, but I’m on the side of the weasels and ferrets and evil little stoats.
If a kid grew up influenced purely by the characters and morals in this book, they would become a terrible, arrogant, selfish, pompously annoying person (and possibly commit crimes, fully anticipating no consequences). I would not want my child to read this until they were much older, but I would tell them not to bother.
It was amusing looking at StoryGraph reviews and seeing the content warnings tagged for this children’s book: gun violence, racism, racial slurs, classism, sexism, misogyny, fatphobia… I know it’s a product of it’s time, but this is not exactly great.
I don’t show more know how this became a beloved children’s classic because it sets a horrible example for children. It is whimsical and charming and written nicely, but that’s about it.
This doesn’t affect my review as 1) it was already negative and 2) again, I know the book was a product of its time, and oh how I wish I could remember exactly what it was, but there was a comment so blatantly and utterly sexist that I visibly gaped (and then laughed). The rest of the book is rife with inherent sexism but it’s at least under-handed and normalized, am I right ladies?! Yet another terrible example for impressionable young children.
Also, I’m trying not to question the implications of these characters using and eating animal products, and how there’s humans but also tiny toads driving cars, and a million other worldbuilding inconsistencies.
(Do they drive on the same road? Do the animals get their own roads? Do toads drive human-sized cars, somehow?! Literally actually HOW was a toad able to pass for a human woman? Where does the meat the animals eat come from? Do they know? Is a big secret being kept from them by the humans? Or are cows seen as an inferior species and put in death camps? Is this secretly a horror novel?)
I don’t expect kids to care too much about that, but it’s another reason I’m surprised by the status this book has as a rewarded classic. It’s adorable, sure, but it’s messy and random and nothing makes sense. Which I could look past in a cute kid’s book if I wasn’t being PROVOKED every other minute by the constant whining and bursting into tears and never learning any lesson, ever.
If a good editor looked over it today, there would be much reckoning. show less

Proust for Kids This is not a book for children, nor for adults, nor for those caught in between. It is not a book for anyone. I will not recommend it, or share it, or ask my wife to read it. It is a book only for me, as all books are, and no one else in the world will ever curl up in a rainbow hammock under variable skies and follow the languid walks over emotional landscapes, alien and yet natural, and see through the eyes of those who are not people, are not animals, either, nor anything in between. I have just read the chapter in which Rat, the steadfast, loyal, mildly gruff yet dependable and neighborly, the erstwhile partner of the innocent Mole, observes the goings on of the migratory animals in early autumn and first rejects, show more then finds himself envious of, then is bewitched by and then released from, the notion of wandering to new unknown lands and leaving behind his structure and his self. In a bit of reversal, he is "rescued" from having the far off eyes of a very different rat by his partner Mole, who perhaps learned the trick of it and the sometimes necessity from the earlier failed attempts to heal toad of his inherent toadness. At the end, Mole provides paper and pencil and suggests to an uncertain Rat that he hasn't written poetry in a while, and perhaps he might scribble a bit, at least to get down the rhymes. And rat does. He is not Robert Frost, our rat. He's not a literary artist. But he is himself, and his poetic spirit is with him always, and applies itself at just the right moment in just the right way, when fumbling with the natural world after an encounter with the divine, for example. His poems will never quite be complete, but there is something there that answers who he is and who he longs to be, and it is enough. My word, what an odd, odd book. "Rich" is the obvious description... Ludicrously rich. Very little happens, everything happens, and we get swept up in it until we realize we are reading a book about everything, and everything that ever was anywhere or ever will be. It's Proust for children. Nostalgia is my least favorite flavor, so I have no reason to love this book, but I do. We are rat, and mole, and sometimes toad, and we might unwisely aspire to be badger, who is clean out of fucks long before the phrase was invented, and we shall ever wander and skip through our lives like the twittering sparrows. show less

They are such boys! Quite uncivilized, except when it comes to the codes of honor and of hospitality. They do love their food and their adventures - but then, they don't need to make a living.

Tasha Tudor's illustrations are wonderful: she makes the landscape enchanting and the friends handsome (Ratty most of all ;). The language is both witty and lyrical, and accessible (not the least bit difficult to read even after all these years). The personalities are vibrant - especially Badger's, and the stories are either mythic or hilarious, or both.

What surprised me was that these aren't just a unified series of adventures. I imagine most readers skim over Piper at the Gates of Dawn and Wayfarers All; maybe they're even left out of show more abridgments. I know it'd take me another reading to appreciate those fully. But they definitely belong in the book and enhance its appeal in the sense that the child reader knows *something* wonderful is being shared, and he's expected to be able to strive for it.

But I don't like how there is no consistent sense of the animals' relation to humans. I mean, sometimes they're small enough to burrow in the riverbank, and sometimes they're big enough to drive motorcars. Mostly they live their lives undetected, but even the barge-woman knows of Toad Hall. I never did read this as a child, and now I know why - I was too pragmatic. show less

This story is beyond delightful no matter how many times I've read this wonderful book. The friendship of Mole, Rat, Toad, and Badger is heartwarming. They have such wonderful adventures together and get into (and out of, Mr. Toad!) so much trouble. There are so many comical moments, touching moments, and uplifting moments in this beautifully written book. A classic for good reason and one that I will pick up again and again to visit with these charming dear old friends throughout my lifetime.

I have so many thoughts about this classic. I'd never read it before, then the audiobook came across my desk and I decided it was time. As I started listening, my mind completely wandered from the story and I had to start over. Again and again this kept happening (there's not a lot of action in the beginning to hold one's attention). I had to really concentrate to understand what was happening and when I did...

Is this a book about a bunch of gay men?

Mole, Water Rat, Toad and Badger are all animals with the characteristics and habits of humans--to be specific, well-to-do human males from the year 1908. They picnic, go boating, have luncheons, smoke and drink coffee. They wear waistcoats and own estates. They're all adults--they live on show more their own and make their own livings. None of them has a wife or children or any immediate family. They're fiercely loyal to each other and seem to be like a clique.

Seriously, if I didn't know that this was supposed to be a children's book, I'd swear Mole and Ratty were between-the-lines lovers, the bedrock couple of the group. Badger is the older, wiser, grumpier member, and Mr. Toad is obviously the wild and crazy kid that everyone loves but also can't stand.

So that's my reading of this book. It's basically Queer as Folk in a Downton Abbey setting. Only there's no sex because, duh, it's a children's book. show less