I have never read The Wind in the Willows.

Snippets, of course, but never the whole thing. The Girls read it. I’ve read about it. I know the “symbolism.” I know “Mr. Badger is not that kind of person.”

I know that Grahame was not an especially… . Let’s just say that sending your only son who is blind in one eye and cannot see out of the other off to Christ Church to be so miserable and unhappy that he lays down on a train track one night… . So Grahame’s life should not be shared with children.

And that’s what this is about. I need to find something interesting and little known about The Wind in the Willows or its characters or author for the Companion Book. [That Milne was a devoted admirer of Grahame does not speak well of Milne but I shall set that aside.]

Potter was easy. She actually liked kids (unlike Milne and Grahame). Peter and Benjamin, and the little hedgehog named Mrs. Tiggy weren’t just pets. They were animals she and her brother smuggled from the family’s summer residence in the Lake District in northern England to their London home.

The entry on Lassie was pretty easy. Watch Lassie Come Home again– the 1943 version. Aside. If you have not seen this movie, or if it’s been years, do watch it. Little Roddy McDowall and Elizabeth Taylor are something to behold.

Milne? Ah. I figured something out.

But Mole and Rat– two of the “famous animals” whose portrait hangs in The Hall of Fame in the Schoolhouse in Miss Missy’s School… ?

Thanks for chatting with me.

Oh. One more thing. The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature (1984, 1995) is an excellent resource. Far superior to that infallible source.

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