One of my professors at University described The Wind in the Willows as “soothing”. I’m not sure if I’d describe the entire novel as such, but there’s some sort of calming quality in the pages of this book.

But that’s not all. While reading this, I found myself laughing several times and enjoying my time. Especially with all the Englishness that the animal characters display in here. Even if they are, as said before, animals, they act and talk as real English gentlemen (female characters are notoriously absent from this one, with a few exceptions). But the thing that made it all the more funny was that they never got to be anthropomorphized animals and retained their “animality”, in a way. Frog, who is something of an upper-class twit, still eats flies and so on. And the same goes for the other animals.

It’s also pretty confusing how these animals are portrayed in the novel. As I mentioned, there’s a certain Englishness that is all over the place, but they never get to the point where they stop being real animals. And thus is very weird to read them eating roast-beef, for example. The matter is slightly acknowledged in the novel, when the narrator says that it is bad animal etiquette to comment on such cannibalism (the same thing happens in The Chronicles of Narnia), and goes on. And I’m still not sure about which size these guys were. Normal, animal size? Human- size? It kind of goes everywhere in the book, with them living in holes by the river, and then with Frog being able to drive cars and trains with no problems.

At first, the book felt to me like a collection of short stories about these friends, but as the plot progresses, you get to see all the connections here. And it highlights several things that I believe are important with children’s story. For starters, one of the main topics here is friendship and how you don’t stop being friends with someone because they do stupid things. Frog’s friends don’t drop him like a hot potato as soon as he gets into trouble. Quite the contrary, they help him sort everything through.

But I have to say that my favorites were the Mole and the Rat. I really loved the way in which they helped each other (and other animals). Mole was kind of cute, being shy and all. By the way, my favorite chapter is “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” (where the Pink Floyd album takes its name, nonetheless), when the two of them get to meet Pan, who is like Christ for animals or something. It’s beautifully written and it took my breath away with the sheer power of the words. Gorgeous.

It also reminded me a lot of Beatrix Potter’s stories. And it makes sense, because her stories and Grahame’s were written around the same time, so some overlapping is almost expectable. But Grahame’s novel, I think, has a little bit of parody to it. Mostly regarding Frog and his silliness about how he handles his money. Maybe Grahame’s making fun of aristocracy or something with him. And there’s criticism to the changes in the society of the early 20th century in England, with the contrast drawn between the nature of the pond and the mechanical things that humans carry.

I’d recommend it to anyone with little children who have already exhausted Beatrix Potter’s work.