Amazon.com description: Product Description: The Wind In the Willows is a children's novel/fable by Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. Notable for its mixture of mysticism, adventure, morality, and camaraderie and celebrated for its evocation of the nature of the Thames valley. Grahame took inspiration when he spent his time by the River Thames doing much as the animal characters in his book do—namely, as one of the phrases from the book says, "simply messing about in boats"—and wrote down the bed-time stories he had been telling his son Alistair. In 1909, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, wrote to Grahame to tell him that he had "read it and reread it, and have come to accept the characters as old friends". In 2003, The Wind in the Willows was listed at number 16 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.