English · Intermediate
Read The Wind in the Willows in Englishwith every sentence explained
Kenneth Grahame · 1908
Free to start · iPhone, iPad & Mac
About the book
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame was first published in 1908. In Passage you read the full text in the original English, marked intermediate and filed under children and fantasy. It runs to about 58,300 words.
Messing about in boats, picnics by the river — and one Toad who cannot behave.
One spring morning, the shy Mole throws down his broom, abandons his cleaning and wanders out into the sunshine. On the riverbank he meets the kind, poetry-loving Water Rat, who introduces him to the joys of boats, picnics and life on the river.
Soon Mole is meeting Rat's friends: the wise, gruff Badger, who lives deep in the frightening Wild Wood, and the rich, boastful Mr Toad of Toad Hall, who falls head over heels for every new craze. When Toad discovers motor cars, his reckless passion sends him racing straight towards disaster — and his loyal friends must decide how to save him from himself.
Kenneth Grahame's 1908 classic is a gentle, funny celebration of friendship, home and the English countryside.
- Author
- Kenneth Grahame
- First published
- 1908
- Language
- English
- Level
- Intermediate
- Genre
- Children, Fantasy
- Length
- About 58,300 words
How it opens
The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said “Bother!”
Reading The Wind in the Willows in Passage
Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in English. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:
- a natural translation of that exact sentence,
- a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
- the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
- all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.
It's marked intermediate: comfortable once everyday English feels familiar, with the harder sentences one tap away. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
