The Wind in the Willows

The Wind in the Willows is a children's novel by Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. It was based on bedtime stories Grahame told his son Alastair, and it follows four animals in the English countryside: Mole, Ratty, Badger and the irrepressible Mr Toad.

Mole abandons his spring cleaning, finds the river and meets Rat, who teaches him to row and takes him to visit the neighbours. Toad is wealthy, enthusiastic and completely unable to resist a new craze, which ends in a stolen motorcar, a prison sentence and a return home to find that stoats and weasels have taken over his house. Badger, who dislikes society, becomes the figure the others turn to.

The book also contains short stories that stand apart from the main narrative, including the chapter in which Rat meets a seafaring rat and is briefly carried away by the idea of elsewhere. Grahame's riverbank is a small, settled world with rules, and the novel's lasting appeal lies in the contrast between that domesticity and the friendships that keep interrupting it.