"A book about the love of friends and the joys of existence" Sunday Times "It is in the same category as Great Expectations or Tom Jones, because despite its brevity and its simplicity it has a deep strangeness which is never dulled by successive readings" -- Mark Haddon "Now I have read it and reread it, and have come to accept the characters as old friends... Indeed, I feel about going to Africa very much as the sea-faring rat did when he almost made the water-rat wish to forsake everything and start wandering!" -- Theodore Roosevelt "For generations of English children, the gentle adventures of Mole, Rat, Badger, Toad and the other characters from The Wind In The Willows have been part of the magic of growing up; a world of innocence and simplicity too soon left behind" Daily Mail "It is a book that breaks nearly every rule of modern children's fiction...it wasn't about fairies at the bottom of the garden, but it was about magic - just the right kind of magic. It thrills me still to read it." -- Shirley Hughes The Times