A WIND IN THE WILLOWS

BY: KENNETH GRAHAME

OVERVIEW
First published in 1908, The Wind in the Willows by Scottish writer Kenneth Grahame is
a story for young readers that recounts the adventures of three animals: Mole, Rat, and
Badger. In the woodlands where they live, the trio must deal with various problems—
which include frequently rescuing their friend Mr. Toad, who loves thrills and often
causes trouble.

Widely considered one of the greatest literary works for children, The Wind in the
Willows has been reprinted dozens of times, and many editions are illustrated by famous
artists. The 1931 edition famously featured drawings by Ernest H. Shepard, who also
illustrated A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh. The book has been adapted into feature films,
television productions, and a dozen works for stage, including musicals and an opera.

Plot Summary

Tired of spring cleaning, Mr. Mole ventures up from his burrow to the surface and
rejoices in the warm sun on the meadows. He wanders until he comes to a river, the
first he’s ever seen. Across the water lives Mr. Rat, a water rat, who invites Mole to go
boating. They picnic by a small lagoon. Otter joins them, and Mr. Badger drops by, but
he’s grumpy around too much company and leaves. Mr. Toad hurries past in his latest
water toy, a fancy competition rowboat. Otter says Toad will soon tire of it and take up
another adventurous hobby. On the return trip with Rat, Mole eagerly tries to work the
oars—but capsizes the boat. Rat quickly sets it right, and Mole apologizes. Rat invites
Mole to live with him; Mole accepts.

Rat teaches Mole to swim and row. One day, they scull up to Toad Hall to visit Mr. Toad.
He has bought a colorful wagon—a house on wheels—and Rat and Mole join him on a
journey. Two days into their travels, a “motor-car” hurtles past, startling the horse and
causing the wagon to tumble into a ditch. The car entrances Toad, who discovers a
sudden passion for automobiles.

Fall turns to winter, and Mole gets a yen to visit the mysterious Mr. Badger. He walks to
the Wild Wood, where glinting eyes stare from dark holes and strange whistles echo.
Rabbits and other animals suddenly run for their lives, so Mole hides in a tree hole. A
worried Rat searches for him and finds him in the tree.

They try to cross the Wild Wood at night but get bogged down in a snowstorm. By
chance, they find Badger’s front door and knock on it. Badger welcomes them, feeds
them, and gives them beds to sleep in. In return, Rat and Mole inform Badger that Mr.
Toad has bought and crashed seven automobiles. Badger insists that, come springtime,
they must talk sense into Toad.

On the way back from a December hunting trip, Mole senses his old burrow nearby. He
and Rat locate it: It’s just as Mole left it, neat and orderly though dusty. A chorus of
caroling mice appear at the door, and Mole and Rat invite them in. Rat has one of them
run to the village for a basket of food, which they all enjoy. Mole is glad to be at his old
home but continues his adventures above ground too.

Mr. Toad keeps buying and crashing cars. Worried about his health and dwindling estate,
Badger, Rat, and Mole visit him and try to make him give up his driving adventures.
They keep him locked up at home, but he escapes, steals a car, gets arrested, and goes
to prison.

Meanwhile, Otter’s young boy, Portly, disappears, so Rat and Mole row upriver,
searching for him. Near dawn, they hear beautiful pipes playing and follow the sound to
a small, lovely island, where they find the demigod Pan playing music while protecting
the sleeping Portly. A breeze makes them forget the vision of the island and Pan’s
music. Rat and Mole deliver Portly to Otter and return home, puzzling sadly over
something wonderful they can’t quite remember.

Wallowing in misery in his prison cell, Toad becomes a project for the jailer’s daughter,
who brings him food and talks him out of his funk. She helps him escape by disguising
him in a washerwoman’s uniform. Toad then asks a train engine driver to give him a ride
back to his home. On the way, they’re chased by a police train, but Toad jumps off in
the woods and disappears among the trees.

Rat meets a visiting ship rat, who enchants him with stories of the great coastal cities of
Europe. Hypnotized, Rat decides that he, too, wants to visit other lands and prepares to
leave—but Mole intercepts him and shakes him out of his trance.

Toad wakes in the forest and sets out along a canal road. A barge, pulled by a horse,
floats past, and Toad hitches a ride on it. Toad tells the stout lady who steers it that he’s
a very successful washerwoman with 20 employees. She tells him that she has many
dirty clothes stashed below and wonders if he’d clean them while she takes him toward
his destination. Toad tries to launder the clothes but doesn’t know what he’s doing. The
woman laughs at his futile efforts; Toad is angry and insults her. She picks him up and
throws him off the boat. Enraged, Toad climbs out of the canal, runs after her, and
steals her horse.

He rides for miles and sees a “gipsy” cooking breakfast. The man offers to buy the horse
for cheap. Toad is hungry, so he accepts on the condition that he receive some
breakfast. Afterward, on foot, he hails an approaching car but nearly faints because it’s
the same one he stole weeks earlier. The driver and passenger take pity on him,
thinking he’s a distressed washerwoman, and give him a ride. Talking his way into the
driver’s seat, he speeds and crashes the car into a pond.

Running from the police again, Toad falls into the river, which carries him past Rat’s
house. Rat rescues him. Toad learns that Toad Hall has been taken over by weasels with
guns. He marches up to his house but gets shot at and retreats; he tries to row there,
but guards sink his boat. Badger says a secret tunnel opens into the Hall. The four
friends agree to use it to raid the Hall during an upcoming weasel banquet and evict the
squatters. Mole dresses up in Toad’s washerwoman disguise and visits the Hall, where
he suggests to the guards that more than 100 rats and badgers will attack after dark.
This sends the stoats into a panic.

That evening, in the middle of the boisterous banquet, the four friends burst into the
great hall, shouting, swinging cudgels, and sending weasels scampering for the exits.
The escaping animals get into a fight with the guardian stoats, who think the attack that
Mole warned them of is on. All the interlopers scatter into the night.

Toad and Badger host a banquet for the neighbors. Badger and Rat prevail on Toad not
to ruin it with boastful speeches and songs, and he instead behaves very well, even
giving credit to his compatriots. To his surprise, the guests respect him more for his
modesty than for his old bravado. Thereafter, the river community regards Mole, Rat,
Badger, and Toad as great heroes.
 THE CHARLOTTE WEB
BY: E.B. WHITE (ELWYN BROOKS WHITE)

Fern Arable is an eight-year-old girl who lives on a farm with her parents and older
brother Avery. One day, Fern stops her father from killing a runt pig, claiming it is unfair
to kill the animal simply because it is small and weak. Fern names the pig Wilbur. For
several weeks, Fern feeds Wilbur from a baby bottle and plays with him, and the two
become close. But when Wilbur is five weeks old, Mr. Arable insists he must be sold.
Fern calls her aunt and uncle, the Zuckermans, who also own a farm. They buy Wilbur
for six dollars. Fern visits Wilbur in the Zuckerman barn often, but when she is not
there, Wilbur feels bored and wants a friend. One day, a small voice says that it will be
his friend. The voice belongs to Charlotte, a spider living on a web above Wilbur’s pen.
Though Wilbur is happy to find a friend, he is disturbed by her bloodthirsty feeding
habits. Overhearing their conversation, a goose in the barn thinks to herself that Wilbur
doesn’t realize the Zuckermans will slaughter him at Christmas.

When summer arrives, Fern visits Wilbur almost every day, and the animals trust her.
Wilbur is fed well and growing larger. One day, though, the oldest sheep tells Wilbur that
the Zuckermans will soon kill him and make ham and bacon from him. Wilbur becomes
terrified and cries out for someone to save him. Charlotte promises she will come up
with a plan. Meanwhile, Fern tells her parents that she hears the animals at the
Zuckermans’ barn talk, which deeply concerns her mother. After days of thinking,
Charlotte decides she will play a trick on Mr. Zuckerman to save Wilbur. One night she
tears a hole in her web and begins to spin. The next morning, when Lurvy, the
Zuckermans’ farm hand, brings Wilbur’s slop to his trough, he notices Charlotte’s web
above the pig. The words SOME PIG! are spelled out in the middle. Lurvy and the
Zuckermans are astonished. Claiming the web is a miracle, Mr. Zuckerman tells the local
minster. The news spreads, and people from all over the county come to see Wilbur.

Charlotte asks the barn animals to help her think of more words to write in her web. The
goose suggests terrific. The oldest sheep persuades Templeton, the rat that lives under
Wilbur’s trough, to tear out ads from newspapers in the dump and bring them to
Charlotte for other words to use. That night Charlotte spins the word TERRIFIC in the
middle of her web. Soon, people start returning to the Zuckerman farm to see the
“terrific” pig. Mr. Zuckerman decides to bring Wilbur to the county fair in September.
When Templeton brings a soap ad reading “With New Radiant Action” to Charlotte, she
decides to spin RADIANT into her web. The next day, Fern tells her mother stories she
has heard Charlotte tell Wilbur, including one about a cousin who spun a balloon and
sailed away on the wind. Mrs. Arable drives into town to seek Dr. Dorian’s advice about
her daughter’s behavior, but he assures her that eventually Fern will become just as
interested in Henry Fussy, a boy she knows, as she is in the animals.

As the end of summer approaches, Charlotte writes RADIANT in her web, and crowds
keep coming to see Wilbur. The Arables, the Zuckermans, and Lurvy prepare to go to
the fair. Charlotte and Templeton hide themselves in the crate Lurvy built for Wilbur so
they can go to the fair with him. Once there, Charlotte builds a web above Wilbur’s pen
and notices a huge hog called Uncle next it. Soon after Fern and Avery run off to have
fun, Fern meets Henry Fussy, who treats her to a roller coaster ride. Templeton goes off
to the fair too and brings back a newspaper clipping with the word humble for Charlotte
to write in her web.

After a hot day at the fair, the families and Lurvy drive home. Charlotte is tired, but she
tells Wilbur she is making a masterpiece that she will show him tomorrow. The next
morning, Wilbur sees that Charlotte has made an egg sac with 514 eggs. Charlotte tells
Wilbur she doesn’t think she will live to see her children. Templeton tells Wilbur and
Charlotte that Uncle has a blue tag on his pen, meaning he won first prize.

Arriving at the fair, the Arables, the Zuckermans, and Lurvy spot the word HUMBLE in
Charlotte’s web and rejoice, but then they notice that Uncle has already won. Mr.
Zuckerman still insists on giving Wilbur a buttermilk bath to make him look his best.
Suddenly a voice comes over the loudspeaker, announcing that a special award will be
given and asking Mr. Zuckerman to bring his pig to the judges’ booth. On the way there,
Fern sees Henry, and she races off to treat him to a Ferris wheel ride. Mr. Zuckerman is
awarded $25 and a bronze medal. Wilbur faints in the excitement, but Templeton bites
his tail to revive him. Back at Wilbur’s pen, Charlotte says she will not be returning to
the farm because she will die soon. Wilbur promises Templeton that if he retrieves
Charlotte’s egg sac, Wilbur will always let him eat from his trough first. Templeton
agrees. Wilbur holds the egg sac in his mouth. As Wilbur is pushed into his crate, he
winks at Charlotte, who whispers goodbye and waves. The next day, Charlotte dies.

Wilbur returns home with the egg sac. Throughout the winter, he guards and warms it,
and in spring, tiny spiders begin crawling out. One morning, each young spider spins a
balloon with fine silk and sails away on a warm draft. Wilbur cries himself to sleep;
however, when he awakens, three tiny voices greet him. Three of Charlotte’s daughters
have decided to stay to be Wilbur’s friends. Every spring, new spiders are born. Most fly
away, but a few always stay. Wilbur lives a good, long life, but he never forgets
Charlotte.
 THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
BY: MARK TWAIN (Samuel Langhorne Clemens)

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn opens by familiarizing us with the events of the
novel that preceded it, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Both novels are set in the town
of St. Petersburg, Missouri, which lies on the banks of the Mississippi River. At the end of
Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, a poor boy with a drunken bum for a father, and his
friend Tom Sawyer, a middle-class boy with an imagination too active for his own good,
found a robber’s stash of gold. As a result of his adventure, Huck gained quite a bit of
money, which the bank held for him in trust. Huck was adopted by the Widow Douglas,
a kind but stifling woman who lives with her sister, the self-righteous Miss Watson.

As Huckleberry Finn opens, Huck is none too thrilled with his new life of cleanliness,
manners, church, and school. However, he sticks it out at the bequest of Tom Sawyer,
who tells him that in order to take part in Tom’s new “robbers’ gang,” Huck must stay
“respectable.” All is well and good until Huck’s brutish, drunken father, Pap, reappears in
town and demands Huck’s money. The local judge, Judge Thatcher, and the Widow try
to get legal custody of Huck, but another well-intentioned new judge in town believes in
the rights of Huck’s natural father and even takes the old drunk into his own home in an
attempt to reform him. This effort fails miserably, and Pap soon returns to his old ways.
He hangs around town for several months, harassing his son, who in the meantime has
learned to read and to tolerate the Widow’s attempts to improve him. Finally, outraged
when the Widow Douglas warns him to stay away from her house, Pap kidnaps Huck and
holds him in a cabin across the river from St. Petersburg.

Whenever Pap goes out, he locks Huck in the cabin, and when he returns home drunk,
he beats the boy. Tired of his confinement and fearing the beatings will worsen, Huck
escapes from Pap by faking his own death, killing a pig and spreading its blood all over
the cabin. Hiding on Jackson’s Island in the middle of the Mississippi River, Huck
watches the townspeople search the river for his body. After a few days on the island,
he encounters Jim, one of Miss Watson’s slaves. Jim has run away from Miss Watson
after hearing her talk about selling him to a plantation down the river, where he would
be treated horribly and separated from his wife and children. Huck and Jim team up,
despite Huck’s uncertainty about the legality or morality of helping a runaway slave.
While they camp out on the island, a great storm causes the Mississippi to flood. Huck
and Jim spy a log raft and a house floating past the island. They capture the raft and
loot the house, finding in it the body of a man who has been shot. Jim refuses to let
Huck see the dead man’s face.

Although the island is blissful, Huck and Jim are forced to leave after Huck learns from a
woman onshore that her husband has seen smoke coming from the island and believes
that Jim is hiding out there. Huck also learns that a reward has been offered for Jim’s
capture. Huck and Jim start downriver on the raft, intending to leave it at the mouth of
the Ohio River and proceed up that river by steamboat to the free states, where slavery
is prohibited. Several days’ travel takes them past St. Louis, and they have a close
encounter with a gang of robbers on a wrecked steamboat. They manage to escape with
the robbers’ loot.
During a night of thick fog, Huck and Jim miss the mouth of the Ohio and encounter a
group of men looking for escaped slaves. Huck has a brief moral crisis about concealing
stolen “property”—Jim, after all, belongs to Miss Watson—but then lies to the men and
tells them that his father is on the raft suffering from smallpox. Terrified of the disease,
the men give Huck money and hurry away. Unable to backtrack to the mouth of the
Ohio, Huck and Jim continue downriver. The next night, a steamboat slams into their
raft, and Huck and Jim are separated.

Huck ends up in the home of the kindly Grangerfords, a family of Southern aristocrats
locked in a bitter and silly feud with a neighboring clan, the Shepherdsons. The
elopement of a Grangerford daughter with a Shepherdson son leads to a gun battle in
which many in the families are killed. While Huck is caught up in the feud, Jim shows up
with the repaired raft. Huck hurries to Jim’s hiding place, and they take off down the
river.

A few days later, Huck and Jim rescue a pair of men who are being pursued by armed
bandits. The men, clearly con artists, claim to be a displaced English duke (the duke)
and the long-lost heir to the French throne (the dauphin). Powerless to tell two white
adults to leave, Huck and Jim continue down the river with the pair of “aristocrats.” The
duke and the dauphin pull several scams in the small towns along the river. Coming into
one town, they hear the story of a man, Peter Wilks, who has recently died and left
much of his inheritance to his two brothers, who should be arriving from England any
day. The duke and the dauphin enter the town pretending to be Wilks’s brothers. Wilks’s
three nieces welcome the con men and quickly set about liquidating the estate. A few
townspeople become skeptical, and Huck, who grows to admire the Wilks sisters,
decides to thwart the scam. He steals the dead Peter Wilks’s gold from the duke and the
dauphin but is forced to stash it in Wilks’s coffin. Huck then reveals all to the eldest
Wilks sister, Mary Jane. Huck’s plan for exposing the duke and the dauphin is about to
unfold when Wilks’s real brothers arrive from England. The angry townspeople hold both
sets of Wilks claimants, and the duke and the dauphin just barely escape in the ensuing
confusion. Fortunately for the sisters, the gold is found. Unfortunately for Huck and Jim,
the duke and the dauphin make it back to the raft just as Huck and Jim are pushing off.

After a few more small scams, the duke and dauphin commit their worst crime yet: they
sell Jim to a local farmer, telling him Jim is a runaway for whom a large reward is being
offered. Huck finds out where Jim is being held and resolves to free him. At the house
where Jim is a prisoner, a woman greets Huck excitedly and calls him “Tom.” As Huck
quickly discovers, the people holding Jim are none other than Tom Sawyer’s aunt and
uncle, Silas and Sally Phelps. The Phelpses mistake Huck for Tom, who is due to arrive
for a visit, and Huck goes along with their mistake. He intercepts Tom between the
Phelps house and the steamboat dock, and Tom pretends to be his own younger brother,
Sid.

Tom hatches a wild plan to free Jim, adding all sorts of unnecessary obstacles even
though Jim is only lightly secured. Huck is sure Tom’s plan will get them all killed, but he
complies nonetheless. After a seeming eternity of pointless preparation, during which
the boys ransack the Phelps’s house and make Aunt Sally miserable, they put the plan
into action. Jim is freed, but a pursuer shoots Tom in the leg. Huck is forced to get a
doctor, and Jim sacrifices his freedom to nurse Tom. All are returned to the Phelps’s
house, where Jim ends up back in chains.

When Tom wakes the next morning, he reveals that Jim has actually been a free man all
along, as Miss Watson, who made a provision in her will to free Jim, died two months
earlier. Tom had planned the entire escape idea all as a game and had intended to pay
Jim for his troubles. Tom’s Aunt Polly then shows up, identifying “Tom” and “Sid” as
Huck and Tom. Jim tells Huck, who fears for his future—particularly that his father might
reappear—that the body they found on the floating house off Jackson’s Island had been
Pap’s. Aunt Sally then steps in and offers to adopt Huck, but Huck, who has had enough
“sivilizing,” announces his plan to set out for the West.