More than meets the ear

Thousands of children this holiday season will listen to their parents or other adults read chapters from The Wind in the Willows to them. Others will read or reread the book themselves. This famous children's book is 100 years old this year, but as an absorbing article in Salon.com tells us, the story behind it is not childlike at all. Like some other famous children's book authors, Kenneth Graham was a complex man who found solace in writing for children even as he went through many adult tragedies. Why is there a link between a feeling of failure in adult life and an ability to reach into the mind and thoughts of a child? Does the introspection these authors are driven into give them a chance to reimagine the depths of childhood? Perhaps we'll never know, but while we wonder we can still enjoy the magical world that Graham and Lewis Carroll and others have constructed for us. They may have felt their lives incomplete, but they left a greater legacy for the world than many happier individuals have been able to achieve.