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The Wind in the Willows
17 years ago
Yes, it's true... a lot of my favourite books are children's books. I have absolutely no shame in this, though. I think that a good children's book is made to be enjoyed by children and adults like (akin to those classic Bugs Bunny cartoons), and they can still have a great deal of depth.
Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows is an absolutely charming collection of stories featuring the adventures of Mole and Rat, and their friends. On the surface, the book may seem quite boring, because their the stories detail such riveting activities as going for a boat ride, or having a picnic. Well, the beauty of The Wind in the Willows lies not in the characters' choice in activity, but in the imagery. Sometimes I find myself reading for a couple pages only to realize that nothing really happened; the author had just been describing the forest in vivid detail. It may be a children's book, but I guess children had much better diction back then, because I find myself consulting the dictionary from time to time.
Grahame received much acclaim for how elegantly he develops human traits in his animal characters. I know there had been a lot of stories featuring talking animals up until his time, but he had portrayed his characters with the quirks, idiosyncrasies and suppositions of any contemporary well-written human character. He anthropomorphized his animal characters in a way that is probably quite familiar to the people perusing this website. I think of The Wind in the Willows as furry media, as it was 100 years ago.
Now, if I may boldly speculate, I think Kenneth Grahame was a furry. If someone writes stories about animals doing the human things that they enjoy doing, they'd probably be considered a furry these days. I wonder if they had any sort of "furry" culture in the early 1900s.... Perhaps writing bedtime stories for your son was as much of a "furry" outlet as one might get, or maybe Grahame just wrote stories about animals because well... kids like stories about animals *shrugs*
So, if you get the chance, check out The Wind in the Willows. You'll never feel classier reading a furry story XP
Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows is an absolutely charming collection of stories featuring the adventures of Mole and Rat, and their friends. On the surface, the book may seem quite boring, because their the stories detail such riveting activities as going for a boat ride, or having a picnic. Well, the beauty of The Wind in the Willows lies not in the characters' choice in activity, but in the imagery. Sometimes I find myself reading for a couple pages only to realize that nothing really happened; the author had just been describing the forest in vivid detail. It may be a children's book, but I guess children had much better diction back then, because I find myself consulting the dictionary from time to time.
Grahame received much acclaim for how elegantly he develops human traits in his animal characters. I know there had been a lot of stories featuring talking animals up until his time, but he had portrayed his characters with the quirks, idiosyncrasies and suppositions of any contemporary well-written human character. He anthropomorphized his animal characters in a way that is probably quite familiar to the people perusing this website. I think of The Wind in the Willows as furry media, as it was 100 years ago.
Now, if I may boldly speculate, I think Kenneth Grahame was a furry. If someone writes stories about animals doing the human things that they enjoy doing, they'd probably be considered a furry these days. I wonder if they had any sort of "furry" culture in the early 1900s.... Perhaps writing bedtime stories for your son was as much of a "furry" outlet as one might get, or maybe Grahame just wrote stories about animals because well... kids like stories about animals *shrugs*
So, if you get the chance, check out The Wind in the Willows. You'll never feel classier reading a furry story XP
