The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham (illus by Rackham)

Clothbound hardcover with sewn-in ribbon bookmark and gilt accents.  Illustrations by Arthur Rackham.

A delightful adventure, one of my ten desert island books.  One of those books you will come back to over and over again throughout your life.

Since its first publication in 1908, generations of adults and children have cherished Kenneth Grahame’s classic, The Wind in the Willows.

In this entrancing, lyrical world of gurgling rivers and whispering reeds live four of the wisest, wittiest, noblest, and most lovable creatures in all literature—Rat, Mole, Badger, and Toad of Toad Hall.

Like true adventurers, they glory in life’s simplest pleasures and natural wonders. But it is Toad, cocky and irrepressible in his goggles and overcoat, whose passion for motorcars represents the free and fearless spirit in all of us; just as it’s Toad’s downfall that inspires the others to test Grahame’s most precious theme—the miracle of loyalty and friendship.