What a pleasure it is to read The Wind in the Willows. For the most part it is just shear fun; on the other hand, it also deals with the vital themes of life: food, friendship, conflict, self-control, and our relationship with nature and with the deity.
Grahame gives us a mixture of animal fable and adventure story to tell the tale of Mole and his new-found friends: Ratty, Badger and Mr Toad. The action takes place in a fictional slice of the English countryside called River Bank. Bisected by a wide stream, River Bank is bounded by the Wild Wood on one side and a more settled and civilized precinct on the other.
There are many episodes within the story, and Grahame skillfully changes the pace from pure adventure (such as the timid Mole's uncharacteristic excursion into the Wild Wood), to festivity (such as Ratty providing an impromptu mid-winter feast for some caroling field mice) to ruminations on the nature of instinct (as in the tale of the sea rat), to an encounter with the deity on Pan's Island; and of course there are the uproarious hijinks of Toad sprinkled throughout.
Grahame is more than capable of providing us with a memorable image or turn of phrase. My favourite comes from a passage where Toad is sleeping rough on a cold night and has a dream of being in bed:
... and his bedclothes had got up, grumbling and protesting they couldn't stand the cold any longer, and had to run downstairs to the kitchen fire to warm themselves ...
The Wind in the Willows evolved out of the bed-time stories Grahame told to his vision-impaired son Alastair, the inspiration for Mole. Many of Grahame's own childhood experiences inform the setting and characters in the book. It is a credit to Grahame that he took what could be viewed as a sad situation and turned it into a joyous, sensitive, reflective and hopeful tale for all those who happen, whether by chance or by choice, to stroll along his River Bank.
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