Kenneth Grahame

Imagine The Wind in the Willows with real children in place of Kenneth Grahame's storybook animals, and you'll get a picture of The Golden Age. Thoughtful short stories about five endearing and creative siblings growing up in late Victorian England, the charming vignettes gently probe differences between children's and adults' perceptions of the world. Grahame's enchanting reminiscences and inventions, based in part on his own Victorian childhood, are enhanced by the delightful illustrations of renowned American artist Maxfield Parrish. This book, and its companion Dream Days, remain beguiling today. While their language is sophisticated, confident reader of ten and up might easily find themselves caught in the web of story the author weaves; older readers have no excuse not to revel in these marvelous volumes.

Kenneth Grahame ( 8 March 1859 - 6 July 1932) was a Scottish writer, most famous for The Wind in the Willows (1908), one of the classics of children's literature. He also wrote The Reluctant Dragon. Both books were later adapted for stage and film, of which A. A. Milne's Toad of Toad Hall was the first. The Disney films, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad and The Reluctant Dragon, have become the best known adaptations. Early life: Kenneth Grahame was born on 8 March 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland. When he was a little more than a year old, his father, an advocate, received an appointment as sheriff-substitute in Argyllshire at Inveraray on Loch Fyne. Kenneth loved the sea and was happy there, but when he was five, his mother died of puerperal fever, 1] and his father, who had a drinking problem, gave over care of Kenneth, his brother Willie, his sister Helen and the new baby Roland to Granny Ingles, the children's grandmother, in Cookham Dean in the village of Cookham in Berkshire. There the children lived in a spacious, if dilapidated, home, The Mount, on spacious grounds in idyllic surroundings, and were introduced to the riverside and boating by their uncle, David Ingles, curate at Cookham Dean church. This ambiance, particularly Quarry Wood and the River Thames, is believed, by Peter Green, his biographer, to have inspired the setting for The Wind in the Willows. He was an outstanding pupil at St Edward's School in Oxford. During his early years at St Edwards, a sports regimen had not been established and the boys had freedom to explore the old city with its quaint shops, historic buildings, and cobblestone streets, St Giles' Fair, the upper reaches of the Thames, and the nearby countryside. Death: Grahame died in Pangbourne, Berkshire, in 1932. He is buried in Holywell Cemetery, Oxford. Grahame's cousin Anthony Hope, also a successful author, wrote his epitaph, which reads: "To the beautiful memory of Kenneth Grahame, husband of Elspeth and father of Alastair, who passed the river on the 6th of July, 1932, leaving childhood and literature through him the more blest for all time.

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.

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.

The Wind in the Willows is a classic of children's literature by Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. Alternately slow moving and fast paced, it focuses on four anthropomorphised animal characters in a pastoral version of England. The novel is notable for its mixture of mysticism, adventure, morality, and camaraderie.

The Reluctant Dragon is an 1898 children's story by Kenneth Grahame. The story takes place in the Berkshire Downs in Oxfordshire (where the author lived and where, according to legend, St George did fight a dragon). It is Grahame's most famous short story. In story, a young boy discovers an erudite, mushroom-loving dragon living in the Downs above his home. The two become friends, but soon afterwards the dragon is discovered by the townsfolk, who send for St George to rid them of it.

Kenneth Grahame (8 de marzo de 1859 - 6 de julio de 1932) fue un escritor escoc s, principalmente conocido por sus libros El viento en los sauces (1908) y The Reluctant Dragon (1898), ambos libros fueron llevados al cine por Disney.

Footprints in the snow have been unfailing provokers of sentiment ever since snow was first a white wonder in this drab-coloured world of ours. In a poetry-book presented to one of us by an aunt, there was a poem by one Wordsworth in which they stood out strongly with a picture all to themselves, too-but we didn't think very highly either of the poem or the sentiment. Footprints in the sand, now, were quite another matter, and we grasped Crusoe's attitude of mind much more easily than Wordsworth's. Excitement and mystery, curiosity and suspense-these were the only sentiments that tracks, whether in sand or in snow, were able to arouse in us. We had awakened early that winter morning, puzzled at first by the added light that filled the room. Then, when the truth at last fully dawned on us and we knew that snow-balling was no longer a wistful dream, but a solid certainty waiting for us outside, it was a mere brute fight for the necessary clothes, and the lacing of boots seemed a clumsy invention, and the buttoning of coats an unduly tedious form of fastening, with all that snow going to waste at our very door. When dinner-time came we had to be dragged in by the scruff of our necks.

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From the imaginative author of "The Wind in the Willows," an enchanting pair of books that map the imaginative landscape of childhood..

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham has charmed children and adults for more than a hundred years. Sebastian Meschenmoser's lush and expressive watercolor and oil painting illustrations bring a fresh look to this unabridged and beloved classic about Rat, Mole, Toad, and Badger. Like the gurgling river in the Wild Wood itself, readers will be joyfully swept along to join the antics of these animal friends as they try to keep the irrepressible and fast car driving Toad out of trouble in one of the greatest tales of adventure and camaraderie ever told. Meschenmoser thrills readers with more than one hundred watercolor vignettes and twelve oil paintings capturing the emotions and essence of these lovable characters.

The Reluctant Dragon, is Kenneth Grahame's (The Wind in the Willows) most famous short story. It can be seen as a prototype to most modern stories in which the dragon is a sympathetic character rather than a threat. The story takes place in the Berkshire Downs in Oxfordshire where, according to legend, St George did fight a dragon. A young boy discovers an erudite, poetry-loving dragon living in the Downs above his home. The two become friends, but soon afterwards the dragon is discovered by the townsfolk, who send for St George to rid them of it.

Dream Days is a collection of children's fiction and reminiscences of childhood written by Kenneth Grahame. A sequel to the 1895 collection The Golden Age (some of its selections feature the same family of five children), The book is best known for its inclusion of Grahame's classic story "The Reluctant Dragon". Dream Days received strong approval from the literary critics of the day. In one modern estimation, both books "paint a convincingly unsentimental picture of childhood, with the adults in these sketches totally out of touch with the real concerns of the young people around them, including their griefs and rages."

The Wind in the Willows is a classic of children's literature by Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. Alternately slow moving and fast paced, it focuses on four anthropomorphised animal characters in a pastoral version of England. The novel is notable for its mixture of mysticism, adventure, morality, and camaraderie.

The Golden Age is a collection of reminiscences of childhood, written by Kenneth Grahame and first published in book form in 1895. Widely praised upon its first appearance - Algernon Charles Swinburne, writing in the Daily Chronicle, called it "one of the few books which are well-nigh too praiseworthy for praise" - the book has come to be regarded as a classic in its genre. Typical of his culture and his era, Grahame casts his reminiscences in imagery and metaphor rooted in the culture of Ancient Greece; to the children whose impressions are recorded in the book, the adults in their lives are "Olympians," while the chapter titled "The Argonauts" refers to Perseus, Apollo, Psyche, and similar figures of Greek mythology. Grahame's reminiscences, in The Golden Age and in the later Dream Days (1898), were notable for their conception "of a world where children are locked in perpetual warfare with the adult 'Olympians' who have wholly forgotten how it feels to be young" - a theme later explored by J. M. Barrie and other authors.

Grahame's reminiscences are notable for their conception "of a world where children are locked in perpetual warfare with the adult 'Olympians' who have wholly forgotten how it feels to be young"--a theme later explored by J. M. Barrie and other authors.