This sequel to The Golden Age is an informative snapshot of the late Victorian era that captures the world of imagination inhabited by children. These stories are written with humor and wit as Grahame depicts a private, separate universe of five siblings whose concerns rarely overlap with the world of adults, whom they refer to as Olympians. The collection's most famous story, The Reluctant Dragon, sees the narrator and his neighbor Charlotte following dragon footprints in the snow one winter's evening. Meeting with a ...
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This sequel to The Golden Age is an informative snapshot of the late Victorian era that captures the world of imagination inhabited by children. These stories are written with humor and wit as Grahame depicts a private, separate universe of five siblings whose concerns rarely overlap with the world of adults, whom they refer to as Olympians. The collection's most famous story, The Reluctant Dragon, sees the narrator and his neighbor Charlotte following dragon footprints in the snow one winter's evening. Meeting with a Circus Man, they are regaled with tales of a dragon, which, modest and retiring, was reluctant to fight St. George purely for the sake of convention. Grahame captures perfectly the tone of a childhood enriched by legend and romance, and unsullied by the concerns of adulthood.
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I love THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS, and had expected to love this book too. Instead, I found it a rather tedious bid for sympathy for the author's childhood, one in which he and his orphaned siblings were raised by aunts for whom he had enduring spite.
I have little patience with books that depict adults as the enemies of children --and the idyllic rural setting in which the orphaned children shared their childhood with their aunts sounds blissful, an invitation to imaginative play. The author's account of it makes more vivid his scorn for "the Olympians" (the aunts who offered them a comfortable home are never named) that it does the warmth that may have existed between the siblings. (it would be interesting to know if his siblings may have enjoyed those years more than did young Kenneth.)
I'd never choose to share this book with a child; it is unattractively mean-spirited. I assume his later adult life was happier, allowing us to have the book that made his name.
Were it not for the lovely illustrations, my rating would have been one star.
