Wind in the Willows

Kenneth Grahame

Jan 2010 · ABDO

About this ebook

In Kenneth Graham's classic tale of the River Bank, Mole, Rat, Toad, and Badger make friends, have fun, and get into trouble in the Wild Wood. When Toad is imprisoned for stealing a car, the friends find themselves in a fight for Toad Hall. Follow the whimsical adventures of the Wild Wood in the Calico Illustrated Classics adaptation of Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Calico Chapter Books is an imprint of Magic Wagon, a division of ABDO Group. Grades 3-8.

About the author

Kenneth Grahame was born in Edinburgh on March 3, 1859. When he was five years old, his mother died of scarlet fever and he nearly died himself, of the same disease. His father became an alcoholic and sent the children to Berkshire to live with relatives. They were later reunited with their father, but after a failed year, the children never heard from him again. Sometime later, one of his brothers died at the age of fifteen. He attended St. Edward's School as a child and intended to go on to Oxford University, but his relatives wanted him to go into banking. He worked in his uncle's office, in Westminster, for two years then went to work at the Bank of England as a clerk in 1879. He spent nearly thirty years there and became the Secretary of the Bank at the age of thirty-nine. He retired from the bank right before The Wind in the Willows was published in 1908. He wrote essays on topics that included smoking, walking and idleness. Many of the essays were published as the book Pagan Papers (1893) and the five orphan characters featured in the papers were developed into the books The Golden Age (1895) and Dream Days (1898). The Wind in the Willows (1908) was based on bedtime stories and letters to his son and it is where the characters Rat, Badger, Mole and Toad were created. In 1930, Milne's stage version was brought to another audience in Toad of Toad Hall. Grahame died on July 6, 1932.