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Zusatztext “It is what I call a Household Book . . . a book which everybody in the household loves! and quotes continually ever afterwards; a book which is read aloud to every new guest.” –A. A. Milne Informationen zum Autor Kenneth Grahame (1859–1932) was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, the third of four children. When he was five, his mother died, and his father sent the children to live with relatives in England. Kindly treated yet emotionally isolated, the Grahame children constructed a world of childhood pleasures. Although Kenneth left that world at the age of nine when he went to St. Edward’s School, its memory remained alive, even when he found no equal happiness in his adult life. Lack of funds ended his dream of attending Oxford and forced him to take a position with the Bank of England, where he had a successful career. In 1891, he anonymously published the first of his evocations of childhood, The Olympians , in The National Observer . The Golden Age (1895) and Dream Days (1898) established his fame. The Wind in the Willows , written to entertain his son, Alastair, was published in 1908. He wrote little thereafter, spending his remaining years in extensive traveling and in final retreat to the tranquility of the English countryside. Luanne Rice is the New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty novels, including The Lemon Orchard , Summer of Roses , Silver Bells , and Beach Girls . Her books have inspired television movies on TNT, CBS, and Hallmark Hall of Fame and a six-hour miniseries on Lifetime. She lives in New York City and Southern California. Klappentext Hailed as one of the most enduringly popular works of the twentieth century, The Wind in the Willows is a classic of magical fancy and enchanting wit. Penned in lyrical prose, the adventures and misadventures of the book’s intrepid quartet of heroes—Mole, Water Rat, Badger, and, of course, the incorrigible Toad—raise fantasy to the level of myth. Reflecting the freshness of childhood wonder, the story still offers adults endless sophistication, substance, and depth. The animals’ world embodies the author’s wry, whimsical, and unfailingly inventive imagination. It is a world that succeeding generations of both adult and young readers have found irresistible. But why say more? To use the words of the estimable Mr. Toad himself: “Travel, change, interest, excitement!...Come inside.” With an Introduction by Luanne RiceChapter I The River Bank The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said, “Bother!” and “O blow!” and also “Hang spring-cleaning!” and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat. Something up above was calling him imperiously, and he made for the steep little tunnel which answered in his case to the gravelled carriage-drive owned by animals whose residences are nearer to the sun and air. So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged, and then he scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped, working busily with his little paws and muttering to himself, “Up we go! Up we go!” till at last, pop! his snout came out into the sunlight and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow. “This is fine!” he said to himself. “This is better than whitewashing!” The sunshine struck hot on his fur, s...
