The Golden Age

Before he wrote The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame looked back at childhood in these linked sketches of five orphaned brothers and sisters left in the care of distracted grown-ups. To the children the adults are remote and baffling creatures they call the Olympians, forever busy with dull concerns and blind to the real world of gardens, games, and imagined empires. Tender and funny, the pieces catch the secret seriousness of being young and the small betrayals of growing up. Grahame writes with a clarity that made the book a favorite of readers who had long left the nursery behind. Free to download as a PDF or EPUB.