Il vento nei salici (1908)

Always a delight to read. The animals remain animals despite the human characteristics inparted to them.
The river and the countryside are as vivid as when the book was written.

150

adventures of four animal friend ( )

Read this for the first time and really liked it. A book truly for all ages. Something about anthropomorphic animals and living in the woods gets me into the book. Really enjoyed the scene they see a vision of the god Pan. Makes you wonder. If you haven't read this story and need an quick easy read, then pick this one up. ( )

This is an odd little book.

At first I thought it was about animals having their adventures in the woods, but turns out these are anthropomorphic animals and there are humans in this story. The first hint was Toad having a bird in a birdcage and then Toad rides a horse.

The scenes with Rat, Mole and Badger look like cozy tales from the woods while the plot around Toad looks like a Looney Tunes episode. There is even the disguising as a woman and people believing it thing.

Funny enough my favorite parts were the ones with Rat and not the most well-known ones about Toad. Toad is the only one with a consistent plot and yet I like the coziness or just weirdness going on around the other characters. There is also the fact that Toad is annoying and obnoxious and I just wanted him gone.

There will be a few spoilers from this point on, but I don't think it's anything that will ruin the story since the book is not so much about the plot as it is about the characters and conclusions they come to after certain events.

Rat and Mole have such a close friendship that at times it looked like something more. Mole even lives with Rat for a while and holds his hand. They are always together and Otter refers to Mole as Rat's particular friend. However, on the second half of the book those sweet moments between them are not there.

There is at least two Summers in the course of this story so what we are told are just random days in the lives of these characters. My favorite scene is when Rat and Mole encounter the god Pan. I was not expecting that at all in this book and to be honest most scenes with other characters besides Toad don't seem to matter for the plot. They are just nice weird adventures.

I also liked when Rat met the Wayfarer and contemplated going away with him until Mole talks him out of it. Rat has been shown at the start to be very attached to his home and his routine so this was definitely not expected of him and once again I felt like there was something more there and Rat was just fascinated by this other guy.

Now, for the Toad's story which is what most people seem to remember and care about. He steals a motorcar and apparently wants to live and behave like a human. He goes to prison and then a girl that likes animals helps him escape dressed like a washerwoman. I guess those scenes with him being dressed like that and people constantly falling for the ridiculous disguise were supposed to be funny, but it was not amusing to me. Also, there is that slur for Romani people in this book and Toad really likes repeating it. Funny how Toad's story was the only thing consistent about this book and yet it was what I liked the least about it. There is this moral about Toad learning to be humble, but the thing is I am not convinced that he is actually changed by the end of the book.

The book would have been so much better without him and the humans in the story. I just wanted a few tales about woodland creatures and I only got a few chapters of that. I can always just reread the first chapters with Rat and Mole, the Pan and the Wayfarer chapters and pretend nothing else exists though. That is just my preference. ( )