Wind in the Willows and Other Real Books about Real Things

I loved Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass because I thought they were funny. I confess Peter Pan never impressed me much, although I read it as a mother and cried over Peter's little milk teeth (My oldest started school that year, her first and last in public school, and I was overly emotional about children growing up, I think).

I loved Wind in the Willows, but I'm not sure I can explain why, although I'll try.

I thought the characters 'real.' I mean, they are animals, so I knew the whole thing was pretend from beginning to end, but they had dimension.
They were interesting. You couldn't be sure how each one would act and what they would say. They weren't predictable cardboard two dimensional people, as so many characters in today's stories are. I also have a soft spot in my heart for crusty old grumps like Badger. I liked him immensely. I liked the vocabulary. It was rich and tasty (I've always loved the feel of large words in my mouth;-D). I liked the rich descriptions. I could savour the descriptive passages, and see, smell, taste, and feel the food, the aromas, the River.

Incidentally, Mr. Grahame wrote the stories for his blind son, which is why the descriptive passages are so, well, descriptive.

Here is a quote from the book Sixpence in Her Shoe, Phyllis McGinley specifically mentions The Wind in the Willows in a chapter on children's literature.
She is speaking of the paltry selection of quality books in her local library. She says:

Children, of all people, deserve the best. At this age, their tastes are
forming. From the first nursery rhyme to the last Arthurian legend, they should have what even their elders do not often get in a story- accomplished style, honest motivation, characters proficiently drawn.
And while those qualities can be found here if one searches, the mass of the writing is limp, listless, unoriginal, mediocre, and humdrum. Plots are insipid or mechanical. Too many pictures smother the story. And even when the writing lifts itself above accepted 'juvenile standards, its vigor is drained away by that leech among publishing structures- the Law of the Right Vocabulary....
The masterpieces among them [juvenile literature] never pall. They are the true escape literature, and in them one can run away to a genuine but different world, where virtue triumphs and struggle reaps its rewards. After all, there is only one test for a good book for children: can it be read without pain by an adult?
... But I do not mistake such books for what on a child's level they
are not- discussion of man's fate in symbols... I enjoy Alice's Adventures in Wonderland because I like nonsense...
Children are adventurous. Something rich and strange delights them.
(she then mentions how her daughter, at the age of five, was ill and
wanted to be read to. She began with Wind in the Willows because it was there)
I began to have misgivings. The adventures were satisfactory, but Kenneth Grahame had not been tutored in the new school of talking down to children. His vocabulary, his wit, his plotting gave no quarter
to limited comprehension.
"Look dear," I said, "preparing to shut the pages, these are awfully
hard words. I think the book is too old for you."
The patient was not only firm, she was distraught. "I don't care," she cried. "I don't care if it's too hard for me. I don't care if I can't understand the words. I just want to hear that story."

Mrs. McGinley says many other clever and witty things about children's literature and has some delicate sarcasm aimed at textbooks, but I think this is sufficient. This is part of why I love Wind in the Willows.

Will your children be inferior to mine if they don't read the same books? I doubt it. I think one can survive childhood without meeting Ratty, Mole, and Toad, although I love them so much it grieves me that others may not. But I do hope that whatever the books they do read, care will be taken that they are of the same literary quality. You see, I don't think it's the *stories* they read that matter as much as the *style.* Or rather, it isn't one over the other. Both are important.

I think it's important that we take care that the books we give our children contain writing that is really good, rich vocabulary, and realistic characters.

But when do they outgrow this fantasy stuff? Somebody asks, with the best intent in the world.  "Pretend and fairy tales are all very well, but there's a real world out there, too and they need to put these things aside at some point."

Talking toads are *not* realistic, I know, but Toady says the sort of things a pompous and silly toad might say if he could talk. That's what I mean by realistic. It works and fits together and seems plausible within the story.   Are friendship, loyalty, bread and butter and marmalade with tea,  the love of hearth and home, courage, and wicked creatures who do others harm real?  They are some of the most real and authentic things in the world, and they are large as life or larger in Wind and the Willows.  We can look at all sides, we can ponder their development over time, consider that a foolish, pompous, blustering idiot of a toad can still love his friends and have friends who love him, see how and why the pompousness is not courage though Toad often mistakes it as such.  It's real.   I think 'wholesome' stories told badly are just as damaging as unwholesome stories told well.

I do so love The Wind in the Willows, and it is a wholesome tale told very well indeed.

You may also enjoy:
Sesquipedalions and children
Nancy Bond and the forced limitations of writing children's books
"Q" on reading