It's Official: 'Wind in the Willows' Way Too British for Regular Children
Rest of World Complains, "I Read It, But I Don't Get It"
After several decades of Methuen/Random House attempting to push Kenneth Grahame’s classic The Wind and the Willows on children, the rest of the world has finally decided that the book is “way too British for any normal child, or reader for that matter.”
Thus spake Dr. Kenneth Kunz from the International Literacy Association, addressing the packed press conference from their headquarters in Newark, DE.
The decision for the ILA to stop promoting Wind and the Willows as a book for anyone to read outside of Great Britain is not without initial controversy; however, the group believes there will be more relief than anger at large about their decision to no longer place the book on any recommended reading lists.
“It’s just way too difficult for anyone outside of England to understand what the hell is going on here,” said Kunz. “I mean, what the hell are caravan chores or cold tongue sandwiches? We think most normal people will be grateful to never have to think about the book ever again.”
Kunz’s frustration with the Willows is shared by others. Many parents around the world (the book has seen over a hundred editions and has been adapted into at least 20 languages) tried to read the book with their children but spent most of the time having to explain what the animals are saying and why they are saying it that way.
“There’s too much to translate,” continued Kunz, “and I’m not even sure if my understanding of aristocratic Edwardian England is correct or what I’m explaining is right.”
“It’s just way too difficult for anyone outside of England to understand what the hell is going on here,” said Kunz. “I mean, what the hell are caravan chores or cold tongue sandwiches?
Other parents have found it hard to overlook just how much smoking the animals do. In several chapters the animals seem to just be sitting around, enjoying cigars and pipe tobacco.
“This might still be the reg in British households, but in the rest of the world, we are trying to minimize a child’s exposure to smoking and tobacco use,” said Kunz.
But there are even several moments in the book that might even leave adult readers without children confused: for one, throughout the entire book there is not even one mention of the word “willows.”
Other head-scratchers are its use of deadpan, the narrator’s dry delivery, and lack of plot. Nothing really happens in the book other than going to lunch or a few animals trying to stage an intervention on Mr. Toad about his penchant for reckless driving.
“I wasn’t sure if I was missing something when I first read it,” said ILA committee member Evaline Hunt. “But when I went back to see if it was like a fairytale with subtext I realized, no, this book is just about a leisure-class of animals hanging around or riding in each other’s vehicles.”
She continued, “If it’s a parody, I’m not even sure what it is even imitating.”
At times it seems like it could become a charming adventure story, but even in the first chapter, any idea of Mr. Mole exploring beyond the Wild Wood or going on a quest into the unknown is immediately quashed by Rat. He bluntly tells Mole that the world outside of their Backwater “doesn’t matter…I’ve never been there, and I’m never going, nor you either if you have any sense at all.”
Well, then.
But what about the chapter “Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” where Rat and Mole are visited by a vision of the demigod Pan? Certainly there must be some sort of significant meaning to this strange moment, perhaps praising a pagan aestheticism found in nature otherwise non existent in the more industrial and modernized aspects of British city life?
We tried to contact several British scholars and critics to see if they could explain this or any other part of the book, but most of them told us to “fuck off” or “blow it out our arse.”
How charmingly British.