Wild Things: YA Grown-Up discussion

I must have read this book 15 or 20 times when I was a teen. Unfortunately, it has been 36 years since the last time I read it, so I don't remember much of it, but I loved it when I was younger.

Mr Toad!! Love love love love!

I saw this movie, but never read the book...

Fiona said: I might have just read a picture type book of it

There do seem to be some "special editions" of this book that Kenneth Grahame had nothing to do with. The original was published in 1908, and was only text--no pictures. But in the 1960's this original text was illustrated with a good many black and white ink drawings by Ernest H. Shepard, with Kenneth Grahame's blessings. Those illustrations have since become as closly associated with the experience of The Wind in the Willows as are John Tenniel's original illustrations associated with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

But it seem that, since that time, other publishers have felt that the book needed to be "improved" with more modern color illustrations.

A few days ago when I went to the local library and checked out Wind in the Willows, I almost took a version not only with "modern illustrations", but it was an abridged, reduced edition with "new text" and was mostly pictures. Fortunately I found a well-hidden copy of the Kenneth Grahame/Ernest H. Shepard edition.

Fiona, if you earlier experience with Wind in the Willows was one of those "special editions", I can see why you wouldn't have thought it was anything special. They are about as appealing as a bad TV show.

I'm planning to read this fairly soon. I think I read it as a child, but I really don't remember much of it.

I have a picture book edition that I read as a child, when I studied the novel version at uni there were only a few bits that I recalled. It was good to look
at it as a social comment on the industrialisation and the damage that that would cause the countryside.

I have a very old, falling apart edition with no illustrations and one with the Shepard drawings. It's a lovely story, and like Watership Down, portrays the animals as flawed and realistic.

I absolutely adored this. I listened to it and I found I was drifting back to when I was a kid all over again.

Drifting down the river with Mole and Ratty. Flying around the countryside with Toad and Mr Badger always to the rescue lol.

April wrote: "Mr Toad!! Love love love love!"
SO very much! Have you seen the BBC version? Excellent Toad.