May’s Title Pick for Children: The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

As a child, this is probably one of the books that made me a reader. In a way, the book gave me a place I could go to that was just for me. Even if there was no one I knew who might have wanted to go down to the riverbank and explore it with me, this was a place I could take myself to where somehow the world made sense, and felt wonderfully safe. I do think The Wind in the Willows is a wonderful book to get inside. But the inhabitants of this world – Mole, Rat, Toad and Badger – they have also got inside me, and what draws me back to the book is the friendships they have with one another, and the friendship they somehow extend to me by letting me into their precious world.

It might be important to know though that you don’t have to be a nature-lover to enjoy this book! Many of us will not have grown up in the setting that the book describes. But the book goes far beyond straightforward descriptions of the natural world. To me, it is mostly about feeling. Have you ever felt overtaken by a strong feeling that suddenly feels exclusively your own? This happens over and over again to the inhabitants of the book, and what you learn from this as a reader is that this is completely natural, and not something to be ashamed of. We are all living, breathing, feeling creatures, and we need the support of one another to feel safe in our world.

The Badger sets the tone:

He sat in his arm-chair at the head of the table, and nodded gravely at intervals as the animals told their story; and he did not seem surprised or shocked at anything, and he never said, "I told you so," or, "Just what I always said," or remarked that they ought to have done so-and-so, or ought not to have done something else. The Mole began to feel very friendly towards him.

You might like to make a start by listening along to the read aloud recordings on our YouTube channel. Enjoy!

by Grace Frame, Shared Reading Practice and Support Manager