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Summary
Summary
Mole, Ratty, Toad, and Badger are back for more rollicking adventures in this sequel to The Wind in the Willows .
With lavish illustrations by Clint Young, Jacqueline Kelly masterfully evokes the magic of Kenneth Grahame's beloved children's classic and brings it to life for a whole new generation.
A riveting tale of bravery, bravado, and hot-air ballooning!
Author Notes
Jacqueline Kelly won the Newbery Honor for her first book, The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate. She was born in New Zealand and raised in Canada, in the dense rainforests of Vancouver Island. Her family then moved to El Paso, Texas, and Kelly attended college in El Paso, then went on to medical school in Galveston. After practicing medicine for many years, she went to law school at the University of Texas, and after several years of law practice, realized she wanted to write fiction. Her first story was published in the Mississippi Review in 2001. She now makes her home with her husband and various cats and dogs in Austin and Fentress, Texas.
Reviews (6)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-6-Toad's brainy nephew, Humphrey, has been kidnapped by Chief Weasel and Under-Stoat in order to repair the hot-air balloon that Toad lost in an unfortunate accident with a church steeple while Mole was a passenger. Yes, it's the characters from Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows brought back to life. An old-fashioned yarn, complete with Young's superb full-color paintings throughout, recounts the exploits of Mole, Rat, Badger, and Toad as they attempt to rescue Humphrey from the weasels and stoats in the dreaded Wild Wood. Hapless Toad becomes temporarily brilliant from a bump on the head and attempts to solve all the Great Big Questions such as: "How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" Rat finds a love interest and Mole fears his comfortable days of floating on the river with Rat will come to an end. The title page describes the book as being a "respectful sequel. containing helpful commentary, explanatory footnotes, and translation from the English language into American." These often-amusing footnotes, commentary, and translations, along with the use of richly descriptive language, produce a deeply satisfying story that would make a great read-aloud choice for a motorcar full of happy passengers. Engaging from beginning to end, this sequel is superb.-Kathy Kirchoefer, Henderson County Public Library, NC (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a toad in possession of a fortune must be in want of adventure," writes Kelly (The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate) in this sequel to Kenneth Grahame's 1908 classic, The Wind in the Willows, in which she supplies a boatload of mayhem and mishaps for Mr. Toad and company. An "Animal of Action," Toad has tired of messing about in boats and stealing motorcars. He sets his sights skyward with predictably disastrous results: a crash, a head injury, and a daring expedition to recover the lost aircraft culminate in a battle waged with birthday cake and baguettes (in place of swords). While Kelly's story is more plot-driven than Grahame's, she evokes an old-fashioned feel by retaining the original's Britishisms, translated for American readers with explanatory footnotes (though most children could probably figure out that a jam roly-poly is a jelly roll without help). Newcomer Young's artwork (not seen in color by PW) captures both the comedic aspects of the anthropomorphized cast and the serenity of the natural world in which they wreak their havoc. It's an affectionate follow-up to a classic of children's literature, one that succeeds on its own as a humorous and adventurous romp along the riverbank and into the Wild Wood. Ages 8-up. Agent: Marcy Posner, Folio Literary Management. Illustrator's agent: Erin Murphy, Erin Murphy Literary Agency. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
The author of The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate (rev. 9/09) boldly extends Kenneth Grahames iconic Wind in the Willows, bringing wit and imagination to the familiar characters further adventures while deftly re-creating the originals venue and flavor, and adding some appealing new players. Humphrey, by temperament a bookish child (if a toad), is far more sensible than his impulsive, outlandishly cocksure uncle Toad, now besotted with aerial transport (a hot-air balloon). Humphrey befriends Sammy, a weasel, essential to a climactic battle with the denizens of the Wildwood -- as is Matilda, a pretty little water rat with twinkling brown eyes, lustrous fur, neat ears, and a delicate muzzle, who bakes a Trojan Cake to convey Rat, Toad, and Mole into the weasels stronghold. Gentle Mole, a bit taken aback by his best friend Rattys affection for Matilda, is eventually placated when he is named godfather to their later progeny. Like Grahame, Kelly is generous with an extensive and appropriately British vocabulary, which she lightens (and often elucidates) in chatty footnotes. She tempers Grahames strong sense of class elitism: Badgers militaristic rigor seems less heroic now, while the true heroes are young Humphrey, a budding engineer; clever, courageous Matilda; and Sammy, unlettered yet conscientious and true. Its delicious to find the old friends thriving in a rousing and well-wrought tale that honors its source while ringing the sort of thought-provoking changes that would indeed soon challenge their pre-WWI Arcadia. The finished book will include full-page and spot illustrations. joanna rudge long (c) Copyright 2012. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Writing a sequel to such a beloved classic is almost as bold a move as Toad stealing a motor-car, but happily, Kelly's results warrant accolades rather than a trip to gaol. The Mole, Water Rat, Toad and Badger are comfortingly recognizable in this charming pastoral with adventures. Mole and Rat adore their bucolic River, and wealthy Toad tools around in a hot-air balloon (a hilarious metaphor for his blustery boastfulness) until a head injury renders him an Oxford-and-Cambridgecourted genius. This new Toad studies "hard data" on the woodchuck-chucking question and publishes "Jam Side Down: A Discourse on the Physics of Falling Toast." While Toad's at Cambridge serving as Lumbago Endowed Chair of Extremely Abstruse Knowledge, his nephew Humphrey goes unsupervised at Toad Hall. Firecracker explosions, a kidnapping and a war with weasels and stoats--including a Trojan Horselike birthday cake--supply action; the Mole's dedication to his dear Ratty supplies heart. New bits include a savvy female character and footnotes that alternate in tone between amusing and lecturing (and are hit or miss in their effectiveness). Lower-class bad guys and a gypsy costume are outdated stereotypes, if true to the period of the original. Literary references range delightfully from Shakespeare to Jane Austen to a tender closing page where Mole reads to Ratty's child (imagine!) a book that's clearly The Wind in the Willows. Funny and warm, this could tempt a new generation toward the raptures of "messing about in boats." (Animal fantasy. 6-10)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
In an age of sequels, it should come as no surprise that Newbery Honor-winning author Kelly has written a sequel to Kenneth Grahame's immortal The Wind in the Willows. Nor, given the stature of the original, should it come as any surprise that this suffers by comparison. That said, Kelly has succeeded in capturing some of the charm of the original, and her characters evoke the spirit, if not the substance, of Mole, Rat, Toad, and Badger. The plot resembles that of the original: Toad is brought low by his hubris; Rat and Mole demonstrate their steadfastness; and there is trouble with those pesky weasels and stoats. Kelly has introduced two new characters: Toad's young nephew, Humphrey, and a comely young rat named Matilda, with whom Ratty (heresy of heresies) falls in love! Not heretical but simply annoying are the copious footnotes that clutter the pages, offering sometimes condescending definitions of British words and phrases and arch commentary on the text. Nevertheless, Return is a diverting tale that, one hopes, will send young readers in search of the original.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
ONCE content to trumpet the classics already on their backlists, children's book publishers have upped the ante, commissioning sequels and prequels to extend time-tested favorites in either direction. A business model that once pertained only to fun fiction series like the Hardy Boys and Goosebumps has gone decidedly upmarket, and so e have a spate of classics-plus. The first thing you notice about the new "Further Tale of Peter Rabbit" is how much larger it is than Beatrix Potter's original 1902 stocking-stuffer. Potter's maxim - "little books for little hands" - summed up her firmly held belief that a children's book ought to be conceived in a way that the young feel it was made for them. By contrast, its modern sequel aims to make the biggest possible splash. The buzz here is given an added boost by the celebrity factor, with the fine British actress Emma Thompson having written this sequel and recorded its companion CD. Thompson, at a minimum, brings high-end Merchant-Ivory credibility to the project (Imagine if Snooki had been behind it.) But is she the ideal Beatrix Potter surrogate? Just what kind of book has she composed? Potter's original "Tale of Peter Rabbit" was a tough-minded adventure story about curiosity and its consequences, and a barbed comic reflection on the rewards and perils of living life by the seat of your pants. As we all well recall, Peter's father was not a quick enough fellow. The widowed Mrs. Rabbit ruefully reminded her children how he got careless one day and wound up being "put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor." Far less is at stake in Thompson's tale, in which what passes for drama comes when, having been accidentally whisked away to Scotland inside a basket, Peter is pressed into playing an ancient hurling game against a champion radish-tosser, described by the author as a "HUGE black rabbit in a kilt." The outcome of the matchup hardly matters, it turns out - not for Peter or for anyone else, and before the reader knows it Thompson herself has made a dash for the exit in a closing line that seems ominously like the promise of a sequel with Benjamin Bunny. While Eleanor Taylor's illustrations bear a fuzzy resemblance to the superlative watercolors that inspired them, they largely lack the clarity, zest and precise knowledge of plant and animal anatomy that give Potter's originals their distinction. Whereas Potter's bunnies gaze sharply at the world, Taylor's stare into space as though wondering why they are there. "The Wind in the Willows" is high on the list of storybook fantasies to which Peter Rabbit fans have traditionally graduated. It, too, celebrates curiosity and the virtues of living by your wits, while also serving up one of children's literature's most exquisite paeans to friendship and the comforts of home. The eclectic narrative (improvised, originally, by Kenneth Graname from a series of bedtime stories and letters to his son) ranges freely from rhapsodic to slapstick, with the latter mood reserved for scenes featuring the fun-loving, hopelessly self-absorbed Mr. Toad. Somehow Jacqueline Kelly has internalized it all, and in "Return to the Willows" she has not only fashioned a witty adventure that is worthy of Grahame, but has done him one better by placing a child character - an agreeably nerdy nephew of Toad's named Humphrey - at the center of the action. Grahame's original cast of characters, by contrast, is a posse of adult males in animal dress, carrying distant echoes of Edwardian literary haunts and watering holes where the author, who by day served as secretary of the Bank of England, found his own companionable riverbank. Running footnotes that archly comment on uncommon words and phrases are a minor irritant, as are Clint Young's notably bloodless illustrations, which portray the principals as soft-focus generic types, rather than characters to care about. Still, it's a welcome surprise to find Toad and friends once more: on the road, in the Wild Wood and best of all, in one another's good company. But you can meet your favorite characters once too often. In the first of Gertrude Chandler Warner's popular "Boxcar Children" series, Henry, Jessie, Violet and Benny Alden are introduced as orphans on the run from the authorities and a distant grandfather. They acquire their nickname by setting up housekeeping in an abandoned railway car in the woods where they demonstrate a degree of self-reliance rivaling that of Robinson Crusoe. Warner, a Connecticut schoolteacher, wrote the first "Boxcar Children" book in 1924 and turned out 18 sequels before the ghostwriters took over, producing dozens more. Now the Newbery Medal winner Patricia MacLachlan has written a prequel that promises to shed light not only on the children's pre-orphan days but also on the circumstances of their parents' passing. THE reader therefore approaches this meticulously crafted tale of hardscrabble American family farm life knowing a terrible fate awaits. The Alden parents prove to be salt-of-the-earth, near-saintly people, and the more we learn about them the sadder their deaths are sure to seem. It's a strange box in which to put all but the most die-hard Boxcar fans. Do children really need to meet the parents, let alone know how they died? It might be argued that the children's preternatural resilience raises the question of the source of that resilience. Might they not have come by it via the shining examples of their mother and father? MacLachlan, for whom family continuity in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds is a favorite theme, responds with a resounding yes. To prove the point, however, she takes the children's rock-solid self-sufficiency to an implausible extreme. Henry, the eldest in particular reacts to news of the deaths with such muted stoicism, it's as though he has been waiting for the awful shoe to drop all along: waiting not merely for bad things to happen to good people, however, but rather for his own too-perfect storybook life to get a tad more real. Leonard S. Marcus's most recent book is "Listening for Madeleine: A Portrait of Madeleine L'Engle in Many Voices."